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arXiv:1911.06007 · Physical Review A

Revealing and concealing entanglement with noninertial motion

Marko Toroš, Sara Restuccia, Graham M. Gibson, Marion Cromb, Hendrik Ulbricht, Miles J. Padgett, Daniele Faccio

Published Apr 27, 2020• 23 citations
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Abstract

Photon interference and bunching are widely studied quantum effects that have also been proposed for high-precision measurements. Here, we construct a theoretical description of photon interferometry on rotating platforms, specifically exploring the relation between noninertial motion, relativity, and quantum mechanics. On the basis of this, we then propose an experiment where photon entanglement can be revealed or concealed solely by controlling the rotational motion of an interferometer, thus providing a route towards studies at the boundary between quantum mechanics and relativity.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.101.043837

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Photon interference and bunching are widely studied quantum effects that have also been proposed for high-precision measurements. Here, we construct a theoretical description of photon interferometry on rotating platforms, specifically exploring the relation between noninertial motion, relativity, and quantum mechanics. On the basis of this, we then propose an experiment where photon entanglement can be revealed or concealed solely by controlling the rotational motion of an interferometer, thus providing a route towards studies at the boundary between quantum mechanics and relativity.
We review recent experimental and theoretical results of photon interferometry on rotating platforms. Quantum phenomena such as two-photon interference and entanglement can be controlled with mechanical rotations in a regime accessible to table-top experiments. We first discuss experiments demonstrating how low-frequency mechanical rotations affect the bunching behavior of frequency-entangled photon pairs. It was shown that low-frequency mechanical rotations can affect the temporal distinguishability of photons and can transform photonic behavior from perfectly indistinguishable (bosonic behavior) to perfectly distinguishable (fermionic behavior). We then give a future outlook for testing the generation of entanglement from mechanical rotation. A recent theoretical work showed that generating path-polarization entanglement from mechanical rotations could be verified with present technology. These works make a strong case for further exploration of quantum phenomena at the interface with non-inertial (rotational) motion.
Although quantum physics is well understood in inertial reference frames (flat spacetime), a current challenge is the search for experimental evidence of nontrivial or unexpected behavior of quantum systems in noninertial frames. Here, we present a novel test of quantum mechanics in a noninertial reference frame: we consider Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference on a rotating platform and study the effect of uniform rotation on the distinguishability of the photons. Both theory and experiments show that the rotational motion induces a relative delay in the photon arrival times at the exit beam splitter and that this delay is observed as a shift in the position of the HOM dip. This experiment can be extended to a full general relativistic test of quantum physics using satellites in Earth's orbit and indicates a new route toward the use of photonic technologies for investigating quantum mechanics at the interface with relativity.
The modification by noninertial motion of the photon bunching properties of an entangled biphoton state is demonstrated. Sagnac interferometers are added to both arms of a Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer that is mounted on a mechanically rotating platform. As the platform rotation speed is increased, HOM interference dips transform into HOM interference peaks, indicating that the entangled photons pass from perfectly indistinguishable bunching (bosonic behavior) to perfectly distinguishable antibunching (fermionic behavior).
Precision interferometry with quantum states has emerged as an essential tool for experimentally answering fundamental questions in physics. Optical quantum interferometers are of particular interest because of mature methods for generating and manipulating quantum states of light. Their increased sensitivity promises to enable tests of quantum phenomena, such as entanglement, in regimes where tiny gravitational effects come into play. However, this requires long and decoherence-free processing of quantum entanglement, which, for large interferometric areas, remains unexplored territory. Here, we present a table-top experiment using maximally path-entangled quantum states of light in a large-scale interferometer sensitive enough to measure the rotation rate of Earth. The achieved sensitivity of 5 μrad s −1 constitutes the highest rotation resolution ever reached with optical quantum interferometers. Further improvements to our methodology will enable measurements of general-relativistic effects on entangled photons, allowing the exploration of the interplay between quantum mechanics and general relativity, along with tests for fundamental physics.
We show the targeted phase-manipulation of an entangled photonic Bell state via non-inertial motion. To this end, we place a very compact laboratory, consisting of a SPDC source and a Sagnac interferometer, on a rotating platform (non-inertial reference frame). The photon pairs of a ∣ϕ⟩\ketϕ∣ϕ⟩-state are in a superposition of co- and counter-rotation. The phase of the ∣ϕ⟩\ketϕ∣ϕ⟩-state is linearly dependent on the angular velocity of the rotating platform due to the Sagnac effect. We measure the visibility and certify entanglement with the Bell-CHSH parameter SSS. Additionally, we conduct a partial quantum state tomography on the Bell states in a non-inertial environment. Our experiment showcases the unitary transformation of an entangled state via non-inertial motion and constitutes not only a switch between a ∣ϕ−⟩\ket{ϕ^{-}}∣ϕ−⟩-state and a ∣ϕ+⟩\ket{ϕ^{+}}∣ϕ+⟩-state but also a further experiment at the interplay of non-inertial motion and quantum physics.
Recent experiments have searched for evidence of the impact of noninertial motion on the entanglement of particles. The success of these endeavors has been hindered by the fact that such tests were performed within spatial scales that were only “local” when compared to the spatial scales over which the noninertial motion was taking place. We propose a Sagnac-like interferometer that, by challenging such bottlenecks, is able to achieve entangled states through a mechanism induced by the mechanical rotation of a photonic interferometer. The resulting states violate the Bell-Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (Bell-CHSH) inequality all the way up to the Tsirelson bound, thus signaling strong quantum nonlocality. Furthermore, we show that inequality remains violated even without using any form of postselection up to the value 1 + 2 . Our results demonstrate that mechanical rotation can be thought of as resource for controlling quantum nonlocality with implications also for recent proposals for experiments that can probe the quantum nature of curved spacetimes and noninertial motion.