External Time-Varying Fields and Electron Coherence

The effect of time-varying electromagnetic fields on electron coherence is investigated. A sinusoidal electromagnetic field produces a time varying Aharonov-Bohm phase. In a measurement of the interference pattern which averages over this phase, the effect is a loss of contrast. This is effectively a form of decoherence. We calculate the magnitude of this effect for various electromagnetic field configurations. The result seems to be sufficiently large to be observable.