Dephasing in matter wave interferometry

FERNANDO C. LOMBARDO & PAULA I. VILLAR

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS. A - MATHEMATICAL AND GENERAL

IOP Publishing Ltd

Lugar: Londres, Reino Unido; Año: 2006 vol. 39 p. 6509 - 6517

0305-4470

We review different attempts to show the decoherence process in double-slitlikeexperiments both for charged particles (electrons) and for neutral particleswith permanent dipole moments. Interference is studied when electrons oratomic systems are coupled to classical or quantum electromagnetic fields.The interaction between the particles and time dependent fields induces a time varying Aharonov phase. Averaging over the phase generates a suppression of fringe visibility in the interference pattern. We show that, for suitable  experimental conditions, the loss of contrast for dipoles can be almost as largeas the corresponding one for coherent electrons and therefore be observed.We analyse different trajectories in order to show the dependence of the decoherence factor on the velocity of the particles.