Effect of plane waves on detector decoherence

Determine whether an impulsive or sandwich plane wave enhances or suppresses the decay of off-diagonal density-matrix elements for a detector initially prepared in a pure state with nonzero coherences.

Background

The paper focuses primarily on expectation values and transition probabilities for a detector initially in its ground state. It does not analyze decoherence for an initially coherent superposition or other pure state with nonzero off-diagonal density-matrix elements.

The authors propose extending the open quantum system framework to determine how interaction with the environmental quantum field, together with the passage of an impulsive or finite-duration sandwich plane wave, changes the decay of these coherence terms. The unresolved alternative is whether the wave accelerates or suppresses decoherence.