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Science

Quantum cats here and there

Ian S. Osborne

Published May 26, 2016• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum Physics The story of Schrodinger's cat being hidden away in a box and being both dead and alive is often invoked to illustrate the how peculiar the quantum world can be. On a twist of the dead/alive behavior, Wang et al. now show that the cat can be in two separate locations at the same time. Constructing their cat from coherent microwave photons, they show that the state of the “electromagnetic cat” can be shared by two separated cavities. Going beyond common-sense absurdities of the classical world, the ability to share quantum states in different locations could be a powerful resource for quantum information processing. Science , this issue p. [1087][1] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaf2941

DOI
10.1126/science.352.6289.1071-b

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Quantum Physics
The story of Schrodinger's cat being hidden away in a box and being both dead and alive is often invoked to illustrate the how peculiar the quantum world can be. On a twist of the dead/alive behavior, Wang et al. now show that the cat can be in two separate locations at the same time. Constructing their cat from coherent microwave photons, they show that the state of the “electromagnetic cat” can be shared by two separated cavities. Going beyond common-sense absurdities of the classical world, the ability to share quantum states in different locations could be a powerful resource for quantum information processing.
Science , this issue p. 1087
In quantum theory, a particle is allowed to be in a state of coherent superposition among a set of orthogonal states. A vivid picture of this concept is the “Schrödinger cat”: a cat is alive and dead simultaneously. This would be no surprise if one means a large number of an ensemble of cats with 50% alive and 50% dead. But, “Schrödinger cat” is a cat. People are talking about a cat being alive and dead simultaneously. In mathematics, the best word to characterize the relationship between states “alive” and “dead” is perhaps “orthogonal”. In quantum mechanics, the superposition of orthogonal states is used to describe the state of a quantum object, or a particle. The superposition principle is indeed a mystery compared to our everyday classical life experience. Beyond the superposition of orthogonal single-particle states, the superposition of orthogonal multi-particle states represents an even more troubling concept in classical theory.
The founders of quantum physics used to analyse thought experiments, to discuss state superposition, complementarity and entanglement. They imagined manipulating single particles, such as electrons, atoms or photons; they would be surprised to see that experiments with isolated atoms, molecules or photons are now carried on in many laboratories throughout the world. In our Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics (CQED) studies, we stabilize and count photon number states in the cavity. We also prepare and reconstruct photonic superposition states suspended between different 'classical realities', generating a laboratory version of Schrodinger famous 'Cat', which he had imagined to be simultaneously dead and alive. We have also investigated the decoherence process, which explains the transition between the quantum and the classical worlds. CQED physics has recently been extended to artificial 'atoms' made from superconductors, in a new domain of mesoscopic physics called Circuit QED. This development opens the way to applications in quantum information science.
Schrödinger's cat has always been an elusive beast, but physicists may have finally trapped one in the laboratory. In the great Austrian physicist's thought experiment, the fate of a cat was linked to the quantum indeterminacy of a radioactive atom—half decayed, half undecayed. The cat, as a result, was both alive and dead. Now physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, report in this issue ( p. 1131 ) that they have created what one observer calls a “Schrödinger's kitten,” in which they excite an atom into a superposition of quantum states, then ease those two states apart so that the atom appears to be in two distinct physical locations simultaneously.
In 1935 Erwin Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment to show the absurd consequences of applying quantum mechanics to everyday objects. Schrödinger imagined placing a cat in a box, along with a vial of deadly poison that is connected to a radioactive atom. If the atom decays, it releases the poison and kills the cat. When the box is closed we do not know if the atom has decayed or not, which means that it can be in a "superposition" of two states (decayed and non-decayed) at the same time. Therefore, protested Schrödinger, the cat can be both dead and alive at the same time – which is clearly absurd. There was obviously, he thought, some boundary between the microscopic world of atoms and quantum mechanics, and the macroscopic world of cats and classical mechanics.