If gravitational perturbations are quantized into gravitons in analogy with the electromagnetic field and photons, the resulting graviton interactions should lead to an entangling interaction between massive objects. We suggest a test of this prediction. To do this, we introduce the concept of interactive quantum information sensing. This novel sensing protocol is tailored to provable verification of weak dynamical entanglement generation between a pair of systems. We show that this protocol is highly robust to typical thermal noise sources. The sensitivity can moreover be increased both using an initial thermal state and/or an initial phase of entangling via a non-gravitational interaction. We outline a concrete implementation testing the ability of the gravitational field to generate entanglement between an atomic interferometer and mechanical oscillator. Preliminary numerical estimates suggest that near-term devices could feasibly be used to perform the experiment.
If gravitational perturbations are quantized into gravitons in analogy with the electromagnetic field and photons, the resulting graviton interactions should lead to an entangling interaction between massive objects. We suggest a test of this prediction. To do this, we introduce the concept of interactive quantum information sensing. This novel sensing protocol is tailored to provable verification of weak dynamical entanglement generation between a pair of systems. We show that this protocol is highly robust to typical thermal noise sources. The sensitivity can moreover be increased both using an initial thermal state and/or an initial phase of entangling via a non-gravitational interaction. We outline a concrete implementation testing the ability of the gravitational field to generate entanglement between an atomic interferometer and mechanical oscillator. Preliminary numerical estimates suggest that near-term devices could feasibly be used to perform the experiment.
If gravitational perturbations are quantized into gravitons in analogy with the electromagnetic field and photons, the resulting graviton interactions should lead to an entangling interaction between massive objects.We suggest a test of this prediction.To do this, we introduce the concept of interactive quantum information sensing.This novel sensing protocol is tailored to provable verification of weak dynamical entanglement generation between a pair of systems.We show that this protocol is highly robust to typical thermal noise sources.Moreover, the sensitivity can be increased both using an initial thermal state and/or an initial phase of entangling via a nongravitational interaction.We outline a concrete implementation testing the ability of the gravitational field to generate entanglement between an atomic interferometer and a mechanical oscillator.Preliminary numerical estimates suggest that near-term devices could feasibly be used to perform the experiment.
We suggest a test of a central prediction of perturbatively quantized general relativity: the coherent communication of quantum information between massive objects through gravity. To do this, we introduce the concept of interactive quantum information sensing, a protocol tailored to the verification of dynamical entanglement generation between a pair of systems. Concretely, we propose to monitor the periodic wavefunction collapse and revival in an atomic interferometer which is gravitationally coupled to a mechanical oscillator. We prove a theorem which shows that, under the assumption of time-translation invariance, this collapse and revival is possible if and only if the gravitational interaction forms an entangling channel. Remarkably, as this approach improves at moderate temperatures and relies primarily upon atomic coherence, our numerical estimates indicate feasibility with current devices.
Finding a feasible scheme for testing the quantum mechanical nature of the gravitational interaction has been attracting an increasing level of attention. Gravity mediated entanglement generation so far appears to be the key ingredient for a potential experiment. In a recent proposal [D. Carney et al., PRX Quantum 2, 030330 (2021)] combining an atom interferometer with a low-frequency mechanical oscillator, a coherence revival test is proposed for verifying this entanglement generation. With measurements performed only on the atoms, this protocol bypasses the need for correlation measurements. Here, we explore formulations of such a protocol, and specifically find that in the envisioned regime of operation with high thermal excitation, semiclassical models, where there is no concept of entanglement, also give the same experimental signatures. We elucidate in a fully quantum mechanical calculation that entanglement is not the source of the revivals in the relevant parameter regime. We argue that, in its current form, the suggested test is only relevant if the oscillator is nearly in a pure quantum state, and in this regime the effects are too small to be measurable. We further discuss potential open ends. The results highlight the importance and subtleties of explicitly considering how the quantum case differs from the classical expectations when testing for the quantum mechanical nature of a physical system.
We show that the atom interferometric coherence revival test suggested in [arXiv:2101.11629 [quant-ph] (2021)] does not test the quantum nature of the gravitational field when the atoms are coupled to a mechanical oscillator prepared in a thermal state. Specifically we clarify that the same coherence revivals take place in a model where the atoms are coupled to a classical oscillator through a classical gravitational field. We further elucidate the quantum mechanical calculation, showing that entanglement is not the source of the revivals. The suggested test is thus only relevant for pure initial quantum states of the oscillator. In this regime, numerical estimates show that it is unfeasible to do a test of the proposed type.
We investigate how to entangle an atom interferometer and a macroscopic mechanical oscillator to create nonclassical states of the oscillator. This work is done in the context of an experimental-theoretical collaboration that aims to implement the proposal in the paper “Using an Atom Interferometer to Infer Gravitational Entanglement Generation,” written by Carney . []. Here, we propose an entanglement witness (EW), from whose violation the generation of entanglement can be determined. We do this for three scenarios: the noiseless case, when including thermal noise, and with atomic dephasing. Thermal noise can arise from two sources: the first being when the oscillator starts in a thermal state, and the second when a continuous thermal bath is in contact with the oscillator. We find that for the appropriate oscillator quality factor Q , violation always exists for any value of coupling λ and thermal occupancy n ¯ . Cooling the oscillator to its ground state provides an O ( n ¯ ) improvement in the EW violation than when starting in a thermal state; in this case, we find that couplings of λ = 10 − 4.5 require at least ∼ 10 5.2 measurements for violation to be observed. For atomic dephasing, we find that EW violation can exist for an atom interferometer with a coherence time of 600 s, which is the parameter our experimental collaborators hope to reach. Finally, we consider how to use magnetic interactions to realize this idea within the context of the torsional pendulum that has been planned for our collaboration.
We show that gravitational curvature can control the generation of nonlocal quantum correlations in a hybrid qubit-mechanical device. The tidal field of a nearby source mass modifies the susceptibility of a shared mechanical oscillator, thereby tuning an oscillator-mediated qubit-qubit interaction and the resulting entangling phase. An exact treatment of the dynamics reveals stroboscopic geometric gates whose accumulated phase is directly sensitive to gravitational curvature. Treating the curvature as an unknown parameter, we derive the ultimate quantum limit for its estimation and identify a parity-based measurement that saturates this bound. Solving the full master equation with the mechanical mode retained explicitly, we find that thermal occupation of the mediator suppresses entanglement between the closure times but is undone at each closure, exactly in the unitary limit for any initial mechanical temperature, so that ground-state cooling of the oscillator is not a prerequisite for the protocol. Mechanical damping and qubit dephasing behave differently: they leak branch information irreversibly to the environment, and it is the heating and dephasing rates, rather than the bath occupation alone, that limit the entanglement visibility and the number of usable interrogation loops. In contrast to gravity-mediated entanglement proposals, entanglement is generated by the mechanical oscillator while gravity acts solely as a classical control field. We quantify the achievable curvature parameters; all curvature dependencies are analytic, allowing for exact rescaling of the results. The scheme therefore demonstrates gravitational control of a quantum interaction and provides a route to curvature sensing based on a nonlocal two-qubit phase rather than on local phase measurements.