Gravitational decoherence of planetary motions

Serge Reynaud (1) , Paulo Maia Neto (2) , Astrid Lambrecht (1) , Marc-Thierry Jaekel (3)

1 LKB (Jussieu) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel
2 IF / UFRJ - Instituto de Física da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
3 LPTENS - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de l'ENS [École Normale Supérieure]

We study the effect of the scattering of gravitational waves on planetary motions, say the motion of the Moon around the Earth. Though this effect has a negligible influence on dissipation, it dominates fluctuations and the associated decoherence mechanism, due to the very high effective temperature of the background of gravitational waves in our galactic environment.

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]; Relativité Générale et Cosmologie Quantique [gr-qc]

Serge Reynaud, Paulo Maia Neto, Astrid Lambrecht, Marc-Thierry Jaekel. Gravitational decoherence of planetary motions. EPL - Europhysics Letters, 2001, 54, pp.135-140. ⟨hal-00002462⟩