Skip to content
Preprint

Master equation for systems interacting with linearized gravity

Aug 2026 · 0 citations · 44 references
Physics

Abstract

We investigate the open quantum dynamics of a system of two masses interacting with an environment of linearized gravitational waves. We formulate the analysis in terms of the observable proper distance between the two masses, and show that the canonical variables obtained from the standard Lagrangian, expressed in terms of the Fermi normal coordinates, are not suitable for an effective description of the system. We resolve this issue through a unitary transformation that provides a physically meaningful system--environment decomposition and derive the master equation to leading order in $G$. Its dissipative sector reproduces the classical energy loss due to gravitational-wave emission, while the noisy contributions suppress coherences between states with different mass quadrupole, or effectively, different proper separations. In the regime where the proper distance can be described by considering small quantum fluctuations around an average distance $l_0$, the dynamics reduces to a Caldeira--Leggett-type equation, with a decoherence rate dependent on the baseline length $l_0$.

View source

Similar papers

Preprint Sep 2026

Global Existence of Classical Solutions to the Relativistic Quantum Hydrodynamic System with Small Initial Data

We establish global existence, decay, and scattering for sufficiently small, smooth, and localized perturbations of a constant non-vacuum equilibrium of a relativistic quantum hydrodynamic system in three space dimensions. In logarithmic-amplitude and phase variables, the equations form a semilinear system of coupled w...

Ben Duan, Rong-Rong Yan · 0 citations
Preprint Sep 2026

Quantum Dynamics of Probe Particles in Thermal Fields and the Emergence of Stochastic Dynamics

Starting from a general Hamiltonian describing the quantum dynamics of probe particles interacting with a set of environment degrees of freedom, we derive the quantum master equation with which the reduced density matrix of a probe particle evolves, the general equilibration condition that they satisfy when the environ...

Bruno Scheihing-Hitschfeld · 0 citations
Preprint Sep 2026

Reference-Measure Freedom of the Effective Hamiltonian: From Stochastic Thermodynamics to the Macroscopic Limit

The effective Hamiltonian (EH), also referred to as the potential of mean force or free-energy landscape, is widely used to describe equilibrium properties and slow dynamics in chemical and softmatter systems. However, the conventional EH has been argued to be ill-defined because it does not transform as a scalar under...

R. Okamoto · 0 citations
Preprint Sep 2026

Scaling equations for Bose-Einstein condensate dynamics across all interaction regimes

We derive a unified set of scaling equations for Bose-Einstein condensates in time-dependent harmonic traps, connecting the weakly interacting Gaussian regime to the strongly interacting Thomas-Fermi regime. The exact Gross-Pitaevskii ground-state density is taken as a fixed profile in rescaled coordinates, with its dy...

D. Marinica, C. Gonz'alez, T. Estrampes et al. · 0 citations
Preprint Sep 2026

Exact Phase-Space Rotation in the Trapped Quantum Calogero Model

We develop a microscopic phase-space description of the quantum Calogero model in the presence of an external harmonic confining potential. Building on the quantum Lax-pair structure, we construct a Hermitian Wigner operator whose expectation value obeys the exact phase-space evolution equation d_t rho + lambda d_x rho...

Akash Sarkar · 0 citations
Preprint Sep 2026

Matter density perturbations in Quadratic Gravity

We investigate linear matter-density perturbations in full quadratic gravity. Working in the longitudinal gauge and adopting the sub-horizon and quasi-static approximations, we obtain an algebraic expression for the effective gravitational coupling in the theory and the equation for evolution of matter density perturba...

P. Bessa · 0 citations

We use cookies to run the site and, with your consent, for analytics and to show ads. See our Cookie Policy.