Decoerenza gravitazionale indotta da un background stocastico: un modello generale

Decoherence induced by the interaction with a fluctuating gravitational background, namely, gravitational decoherence, is a rather young field of study, which holds the promise to provide accessible experimental verifications to some features of the quantum-gravity interplay. In this thesis, we focus on a recent model which has the merit to encompass the models, which were previously formulated. The resulting master equation describes the time evolution of the center of mass of a extended rigid body, embedded in a weak classical stochastic gravitational background. We provide a detailed derivation of this master equation. Then we explore the regimes where gravitational decoherence in the position and the energy eigenbasis are dominant, and we compute the expectation value of some physical quantities, which could be relevant for future experimental verifications. We finally revisit the model and its assumptions when the stochastic fluctuations of the metric are assumed to arise from a stochastic background of gravitational waves, one of the most prominent candidates for inducing gravitational decoherence.