Thermal corrections to quantum friction and decoherence: A closed-time-path approach to atom-surface interaction

LUDMILA VIOTTI, ; M BELEN FARIAS; FERNANDO C. LOMBARDO; PAULA I. VILLAR

PHYSICAL REVIEW D

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2019 vol. 99 p. 1050051 - 10500512

1550-7998

In this paper we study the dissipative effects and decoherence induced on a particle moving at constantspeed in front of a dielectric plate in quantum vacuum, developing a closed-time-path (CTP) integralformulation in order to account for the corrections to these phenomena generated by finite temperatures.We compute the frictional force of the moving particle and find that it contains two different contributions:a pure quantum term due to quantum fluctuations (even present at vanishing temperatures) and atemperature-dependent component generated by thermal fluctuations (the bigger the contribution, thehigher the temperature). We further estimate the decoherence timescale for the internal degree of freedomof the quantum particle. As expected, decoherence time is reduced by temperature; however, this feature isstronger for large velocities and for resonant situations. When the particle approaches relativistic speed,decoherence time becomes independent of temperature. The finite temperature corrections to the force oreven in the decoherence timescale could be used to track traces of quantum friction through the study of thevelocity dependence since the sole evidence of this dependence provides an indirect testimony of theexistence of a quantum frictional force.