Thermal properties of spacetime foam

Abstract

Spacetime foam can be modeled in terms of nonlocal effective interactions in a classical nonfluctuating background. Then, the density matrix for the low-energy fields evolves, in the weak-coupling approximation, according to a master equation that contains a diffusion term. Furthermore, it is argued that spacetime foam behaves as a quantum thermal field that, apart from inducing loss of coherence, gives rise to effects such as gravitational Lamb and Stark shifts as well as quantum damping in the evolution of the low-energy observables. These effects can be, at least in principle, experimentally tested. [S0556-2821(98)04524-X].