Fundamental decoherence from quantum spacetime

Abstract

Abstract Understanding whether quantum gravitational effects can lead to a fundamental decoherence, affecting all systems regardless of their environment, is a long standing open challenge. Here we provide a rigorous derivation of decoherence within a full-fledged model of quantum spacetime, encoded by noncommutativity at the Planck scale. Specifically, we obtain a generalized time evolution of quantum systems in which pure states can evolve into mixed states. This takes the form of a Lindblad-like time evolution for the density operator when the action of time translations generator is deformed by the effects of spacetime noncommutativity. The decoherence time for the evolution of a free particle is used to show that the Planck mass is the maximum allowed mass for elementary quantum systems.