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arXiv:2511.08869

Quantum-classical gravity distinction in reservoir-engineered massive quantum system

Ziqian Tang, Zizhao Han, Zikuan Kan, Chen Yang, Zeji Li, Yining Jiang, Yulong Liu

quant-phSubmitted Nov 12, 2025• Announced Nov 13, 2025• Revised Nov 17, 2025 (v2)
v1 · Nov 12, 2025v2 · Nov 17, 2025
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Abstract

Massive quantum systems have emerged as compelling tabletop interface-systems for testing the quantum nature of gravity. However, conventional schemes that focus on directly using gravity to induce entanglement suffer from overwhelming environmental decoherence: maintaining entanglement between two oscillators requires an impractically high mechanical quality factor. In this work, we put forward an alternative reservoir-engineered scheme, whose core function is to quantify how gravity modifies (rather than prepares) the steady-state entanglement. Compared to quantum gravity, classical gravity introduces additional dissipative channels, which in turn give rise to distinct entanglement characteristics and thus enable the discrimination between the two types of gravity. Notably, this entanglement difference can still be maintained even when the mechanical quality factor is far below the threshold required by conventional schemes. Moreover, it demonstrates significant robustness against non-gravitational couplings, specifically, those like Casimir and Coulomb forces that are inherent in experimental setups. Our scheme relaxes the experimental requirements for verifying quantum gravity, thereby paving a new path toward its near-term realization.

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Massive quantum systems have emerged as compelling tabletop interface-systems for testing the quantum nature of gravity. However, conventional schemes that focus on directly using gravity to induce entanglement suffer from overwhelming environmental decoherence: maintaining entanglement between two oscillators requires an impractically high mechanical quality factor. In this work, we put forward an alternative reservoir-engineered scheme, whose core function is to quantify how gravity modifies (rather than prepares) the steady-state entanglement. Compared to quantum gravity, classical gravity introduces additional dissipative channels, which in turn give rise to distinct entanglement characteristics and thus enable the discrimination between the two types of gravity. Notably, this entanglement difference can still be maintained even when the mechanical quality factor is far below the threshold required by conventional schemes. Moreover, it demonstrates significant robustness against non-gravitational couplings, specifically, those like Casimir and Coulomb forces that are inherent in experimental setups. Our scheme relaxes the experimental requirements for verifying quantum gravity, thereby paving a new path toward its near-term realization.
The question of whether gravity is fundamentally quantum remains one of the deepest open problems in modern physics. A recently explored approach consists of testing gravity's ability to entangle quantum systems, which requires preparing and controlling massive quantum states - a formidable experimental challenge. We propose an alternative strategy that circumvents the need for quantum state engineering. We show that, if gravity is classical, it must necessarily modify momentum statistics in a non-unitary way. We consider the corresponding linearized master equation for two harmonically trapped objects interacting gravitationally and establish a lower bound on the noise that any classical gravitational interaction must induce. We then outline an experimental protocol based on a high-precision torsion pendulum at millikelvin temperatures, showing that the predicted diffusion, if present, is in principle detectable with near-term technology. Our approach offers a novel route to testing the classical versus quantum nature of gravity without requiring macroscopic quantum superpositions or precise control of the system's quantum state, thereby significantly reducing the experimental complexity.
Abstract One of the outstanding questions in modern physics is how to test whether gravity is classical or quantum in a laboratory. Recently there has been a proposal to test the quantum nature of gravity by creating quantum superpositions of two nearby neutral masses, close enough that the quantum nature of gravity can entangle the two quantum systems, but still sufficiently far away that all other known Standard Model interactions remain negligible. However, preparing superposition states of a neutral mass (the light system) requires the vicinity of laboratory apparatus (the heavy system). We will suppose that such a heavy system can be modelled as another quantum system; since gravity is universal, the lighter system can get entangled with the heavier system, providing an inherent source of gravitational decoherence. In this paper, we will consider a toy model composed of two light and two heavy quantum oscillators prepared in the motional ground state, forming pairs of probe-detector systems, and study under what conditions the entanglement between two light systems evades the decoherence induced by the heavy systems. We conclude by estimating the decoherence in the proposed experiment for testing the quantum nature of gravity.
The authors review theories and experimental state-of-the-art efforts to study the effects of gravity on massive quantum systems. Classical gravity is the least precisely tested natural force and may be addressed via precision quantum probes. Experiments testing whether the quantum nature of gravity causes decoherence and collapse of matter-wave functions and whether it can mediate entanglement between separate massive particles are underway, and their results will guide the theoretical description of gravity effects on a laboratory scale.
Over the past century, a large community within theoretical physics has been seeking a unified framework for quantum gravity. Yet, to date, there is still no experimental evidence of any non-classical features of gravity. While traditional experimental proposals would usually require immensely challenging Planck scale experiments, recent table-top protocols based on low-energy quantum control have opened a new avenue into the investigation of non-classical gravity. An approach that has sparked high interest, both in terms of experimental feasibility and of theoretical implications, is the indirect witnessing of non-classical gravity through the detection of its capacity to act as an entangling channel. Most discussions have been centred on the entanglement generation between two gravitationally coupled massive systems. In this work, we instead examine the entangling capacity of the gravitational interaction between two light pulses. We explain the main experimental and theoretical advantages of having a photonic protocol, and lay out the steps leading to the determination of the entangling phase, using the path integral formalism and linearised gravity. We establish a closed form formula for the entangling phase and provide an estimated order of magnitude of the average photon number required for the generation of appreciable phase. Using statistical analysis, we show how entanglement may be certified with lower phase signal.
Observation of gravitationally induced quantum entanglement is often interpreted as a direct evidence of non-classical gravity. While the form and the degree of non-classicality have been rigorously studied from a foundational perspective, classical models reproducing experimental signatures of such entanglement remain underexplored. Motivated by the experimental simplicity, nearly all existing optomechanical approaches assume Gaussian initial states, and due to the weakness of gravity the quantum Newtonian potential is truncated at the second order. However, this regime admits a classical description in terms of the Wigner-Weyl representation, including features typically associated with quantum entanglement. A clear distinction between classical and quantum predictions emerges only beyond this setting. We comprehensively analyze the possibilities and provide operational witnesses for detection of non-classicality via Wigner negativity, and detection of non-quantumness via negativity of the Weyl operator. Our results demonstrate that the experimental requirements on certifying gravitational entanglement are more stringent than previously anticipated.
The quantum nature of gravity is one of physics' greatest unsolved problems, with existing experimental proposals facing formidable challenges in maintaining spatial superpositions of massive objects against decoherence. We propose a fundamentally different approach that bypasses these difficulties. The central insight is that a quantum gravitational field can imprint a gauge-invariant phase on a particle's wavefunction even along an open trajectory, arising from the quantum backreaction of the source. This phase, which manifests prior to the final recombination stage of an interferometer and cannot be generated by a classical gravitational field, provides an operationally direct witness to the quantumness of gravity. Our experimental design uses a single photon whose accumulated gravitational phase due to the Earth is transferred via absorption to auxiliary atoms near the end of the interferometer sequence, preserving the open-path character essential for the test. We scale the interferometer to yield a detectable phase of order 10−310^{-3}10−3 rad and show how non-local correlation measurements on the atoms can access this gauge-invariant signature. Leveraging established quantum optical and atomic techniques, this proposal offers a feasible path to distinguish quantum from classical gravity. A positive result would provide the first experimental evidence for the quantum nature of gravitational fields, with profound implications for quantum gravity theories.