Decoherence induced by a fluctuating Ahoronov-Casher phase

FERNANDO C. LOMBARDO

Barcelona

Workshop; Seventh Workshop on QUANTUM FIELD THEORY UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF EXTERNAL CONDITIONS; 2005

IEEC, CSIC and University of Barcelona Barcelona, Spain.

Dipole interference is studied when atomic systems are coupled to classical electromagnetic fields. The interaction between the dipoles and the classical fields induces a time-varying Aharonov-Casher 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 observable and almost as large as the corresponding one for coherent electrons. We analyze different trajectories in order to show the dependence ofthe decoherence factor with the velocity of the particles.