On Quantum Interference: No Decoherence From an Actual Movable Mirror

Abstract

There exists a commonly accepted viewpoint that a movable mirror in an interferometer should cause interference breakdown due to a quantum jump to one of the two components of a photon mode. That effect goes back to Dirac. We argue that the conventional reasoning is inadequate: First, it would be more circumspect to interpret interference breakdown as being due to the entanglement of the photon with the mirror, not referring to quantum jumps. Second--and crucial--even in such an interpretation, the reasoning does not take into account the uncertainty of the mirror momentum. The effect of the entanglement and interference breakdown would take place if the uncertainty were much less than the recoil momentum, which is of the order of the photon momentum. However, an examination leads to the conclusion that for an actual mirror the opposite situation occurs. Thus there should be no such effect.