The researchers could control the rate of decoherence in these molecular beams by altering the pressure of the gas inside the apparatus: the more gas molecules there are, the more the fullerene molecules collide with them and lose their coherence. As expected, the contrast between the bright and dark interference bands became ever fainter as more methane gas was let into the chamber. This decay of interference reflects the erasure of ‘quantumness’ in the matter waves due to decoherence.
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