Faint trace of a particle in a noisy Vaidman three-path interferometer

Abstract

We study weak traces of particle passing Vaidman’s nested Mach–Zehnder interferometer. We investigate an effect of decoherence caused by an environment coupled to internal degree of freedom (a spin) of a travelling particle. We consider two models: pure decoherence leading to exact results and weak coupling Davies approximation allowing to include dissipative effects. We show that potentially anomalous discontinuity of particle paths survives an effect of decoherence unless it affects internal part of the nested interferometer.