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arXiv:1706.06173 · Reviews of Modern Physics

Macroscopic quantum states: Measures, fragility, and implementations

Florian Fröwis, Pavel Sekatski, Wolfgang Dür, Nicolas Gisin, Nicolas Sangouard

Published May 31, 2018• 222 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Large-scale quantum effects have always played an important role in the foundations of quantum theory.With recent experimental progress and the aspiration for quantum enhanced applications, the interest in macroscopic quantum effects has been reinforced.In this review, measures aiming to quantify various aspects of macroscopic quantumness are critically analyzed and discussed.Recent results on the difficulties and prospects to create, maintain, and detect macroscopic quantum states are surveyed.The role of macroscopic quantum states in foundational questions as well as practical applications is outlined.Finally, past and ongoing experimental advances aiming to generate and observe macroscopic quantum states are presented.

DOI
10.1103/revmodphys.90.025004

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Large-scale quantum effects have always played an important role in the foundations of quantum theory.With recent experimental progress and the aspiration for quantum enhanced applications, the interest in macroscopic quantum effects has been reinforced.In this review, measures aiming to quantify various aspects of macroscopic quantumness are critically analyzed and discussed.Recent results on the difficulties and prospects to create, maintain, and detect macroscopic quantum states are surveyed.The role of macroscopic quantum states in foundational questions as well as practical applications is outlined.Finally, past and ongoing experimental advances aiming to generate and observe macroscopic quantum states are presented.
Quantum entanglement and coherence, traditionally studied in microscopic systems, have recently been observed and manipulated in macroscopic platforms. These phenomena play a critical role in understanding the boundary between classical and quantum physics and in developing quantum technologies such as superconducting qubits, optomechanical resonators, and atomic ensembles. This article reviews theoretical models, numerical simulations, and experimental techniques used to probe entanglement and coherence in large-scale systems. Five thematic outlines are presented, with one outline including two graphs illustrating (i) time evolution of entanglement in a macroscopic oscillator system, and (ii) coherence decay under environmental coupling. Applications, limitations, and future directions are discussed to provide a comprehensive perspective.
The foundations of quantum mechanics have been a subject of intense investigation and debate since the theory's inception. Recent developments in quantum technologies and theoretical frameworks have shed new light on foundational issues and raised intriguing questions about the nature of reality at the quantum level. recent advancements in our understanding of the foundational principles of quantum mechanics and discuss unresolved questions that continue to challenge our conceptual framework. Topics of interest include the measurement problem, quantum entanglement, the role of contextuality and nonlocality, interpretations of quantum theory, and the quest for a unified theory of quantum gravity. findings and ongoing debates in the field, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of research in the foundations of quantum mechanics and stimulate further discussion and inquiry into these fundamental questions.
The notion of a macroscopic quantum state must be pinned down in order to assess how well experiments probe the large-scale limits of quantum mechanics. However, the issue of quantifying so-called quantum macroscopicity is fraught with multiple approaches having varying interpretations and levels of computability and measurability. Here, we introduce two measures that capture independent macroscopic properties: i) extensive size, measuring the degree of coherence in position or momentum observables relative to atomic-scale units, and ii) entangled size, quantifying the number of entangled subsystems. These measures unify many desirable features of past proposals while having rigorously justified interpretations from quantum information theory in terms of coherence and multipartite entanglement. We demonstrate how to estimate them and obtain lower-bounds using experimental data from micro-mechanical oscillators and diffracting molecules. Notably, we find evidence for genuine multipartite entanglement of 10 5 to 10 7 atoms in recent mechanical superposition states.
Glorious victories have been achieved when quantum theory (QT) is applied to microscopic systems. However, although there might be good reasons for us to believe that QT applies at the macroscopic level as well, to give a definite answer ”yes” there is still a long journey. If it does apply, a direct result is that it predicts highly counter-intuitive macroscopic quantum superpositions and entanglements, which we never experience in our daily lives. In this thesis we assume that QT applies to the macroscopic level, and try to find out why we never really observe macroscopic quantum effects. The thesis contains two projects, aiming at two reasons for the above problem. In the first project (Chapter 3 and 4), we show that the required resolution to observe macroscopic quantum effects increases with the size of the system, when both outcome precision and control precision are taken into account. This means that for really large quantum effects we need a very good measuring resolution to observe them, while what we usually do are coarse-grained measurements, whose resolutions are much lower. In the second project (Chapter 5), we try to deal with decoherence, another obstacle preventing us from observing macroscopic quantum effects. We propose to create and detect strong entanglement of micro-macro and macro-macro beams of photons with very weak cross Kerr nonlinearities that are obtainable by current technology. We analyze the entanglement under environmental decoherence with various methods, and show that strong entanglement can still be created and detected under decoherence. We hope that the above results will help to push the boundary of the realm of QT towards the macroscopic level.
One of the fundamental features that separates quantum physics from classical physics is the idea of quantum superposition, also known as coherence. This thesis concentrates on understanding quantum coherence in the mathematical framework of resource theories, viewing it both as a resource to be harnessed and as a way to quantitatively characterise quantum states in contrast to classical states. We first examine the type of coherence resource theory which has emerged recently to cope with general settings where the physical nature of the medium encoding information is not crucial, such as computation. We identify the set of quantum processes in which coherence is neither created nor used, and use these to provide a physically motivated resource theory pictured in terms of interferometry. Using the same concepts, we then find connections between coherence and discord, a type of quantum correlation. In particular, we show how coherence can be used to generate discord, and explore basis-dependent discord as an intermediate quantity. The second part of the thesis applies the resource theory framework to quantify quantum macroscopicity, taken here to mean the extent to which coherence exists in a system on a macroscopic scale. We find the appropriate type of resource theory for this purpose, giving criteria for good measures of macroscopic coherence. We use these criteria to evaluate some previously proposed measures and highlight the role of the quantum Fisher information. Next, we build up measures based on the concept of macroscopic distinguishability and use them to show that macroscopic quantum states are fragile to noise induced by interaction with an environment. Finally, we apply measures based on the Fisher information to a range of experiments involving mechanical degrees of freedom, in order to compare their macroscopicity.