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Physica Scripta

Concepts for long-baseline high-mass matter-wave interferometry

Filip Kiałka, Benjamin A. Stickler, Klaus Hornberger, Yaakov Y. Fein, Philipp Geyer, Lukas Mairhofer, Stefan Gerlich, Markus Arndt

Published Nov 20, 2018• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Designing experiments which delocalize ever more complex and more massive particles requires a quantitative assessment of new interferometer configurations.Here, we introduce a figure of merit which quantifies the difference between a genuine quantum interference pattern and a classical shadow and use it to compare a number of near-field interferometer schemes.This allows us to identify the most promising setups for future tests of the quantum superposition principle, and to discuss the perspectives of interferometry with complex molecules and clusters.

DOI
10.1088/1402-4896/aaf243

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Designing experiments which delocalize ever more complex and more massive particles requires a quantitative assessment of new interferometer configurations.Here, we introduce a figure of merit which quantifies the difference between a genuine quantum interference pattern and a classical shadow and use it to compare a number of near-field interferometer schemes.This allows us to identify the most promising setups for future tests of the quantum superposition principle, and to discuss the perspectives of interferometry with complex molecules and clusters.
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Creating quantum superposition states of bodies with increasing mass and complexity is an exciting and important challenge. Demonstrating such superpositions is vital for understanding how classical observations arise from the underlying quantum physics. Here, we discuss how recent progress in macromolecule interferometry can be combined with the state of the art in cluster physics to push the mass record for matter-wave interference with wide state separation by 3 to 4 orders of magnitude. We show how near-field interferometers in different configurations can achieve this goal for a wide range of particle materials with strongly varying properties. This universality will become important in advanced tests of wave function collapse and of other modifications of quantum mechanics, as well as in the search for light dark matter and in tests of gravity with composite quantum systems.
Abstract The quantum superposition principle is a fundamental concept of physics 1 and the basis of numerous quantum technologies 2,3 . Yet, it is still often regarded counterintuitive because we do not observe its key features on the macroscopic scales of our daily lives. It is, therefore, interesting to ask how quantum properties persist or change as we increase the size and complexity of objects 4 . A model test for this question can be realized by matter-wave interferometry, in which the motion of individual massive particles becomes delocalized and needs to be described by a wave function that spans regions far larger than the particle itself 5 . Over the years, this has been explored with a series of objects of increasing mass and complexity 6–9 and a growing community aims at pushing this to ever larger limits. Here we present an experimental platform that extends matter-wave interference to large metal clusters, a qualitatively new material class for quantum experiments. We specifically demonstrate quantum interference of sodium nanoparticles, which can each contain more than 7,000 atoms at masses greater than 170,000 Da. They propagate in a Schrödinger cat state with a macroscopicity 10 of μ = 15.5, surpassing previous experiments 5,9,11 by an order of magnitude.