Tag: Decoherence detection

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Table of proposed macroscopic superpositions

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Here is a table of proposed experiments for creating enormous superpositions of matter, along with two that have actually been performed (KDTL and MUSCLE, in green). Importantly, all of them describe superpositions whose spatial extent is comparable to or larger than the size of the object itself. Many are quite speculative. I’d like to keep this table updated, so send me references if you think they should be included. [Updated: 2026-Jan-23]

experimentref.object
composition		object
radius (nm)		nucleon
count		superp.
size (nm)		lifetime
(ms)		repetition
rate (Hz)
KDTL[1-3]OligoporphyrinTo achieve their highest masses, the KDTL interferometer has superposed molecules of functionalized oligoporphyrin, a family of organic molecules composed of C, H, F, N, S, and Zn with molecular weights ranging from ~19,000 Da to ~29,000 Da. (The units here are Daltons, also known as atomic mass units (amu), i.e., the number of protons and neutrons.) The distribution is peaked around 27,000 Da.a  ,00∼1.02.7 × 104100,266100,001.2410,000.00*
OTIMA[4-6]Gold (Au),0005.06.0 × 106100,079100,094.0010,600.00*
Bateman et al.[7]Silicon (Si),0005.51.1 × 106100,150100,140.0010,000.50*
Geraci et al.[8]Silica (SiO2),0006.51.6 × 106100,250100,250.0010,000.50*
Wan et al.[9]Diamond (C),0095.07.5 × 109100,100100,000.0510,001.00*
MAQRO[10-13]Silica (SiO2),0120.01.0 × 101000,100100,000.0010,000.01*
Pino et al.
… [continue reading]
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Gravitational transmission of quantum information by Carney et al.

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Carney, Müller, and Taylor have a tantalizing paper on how the quantum nature of gravity might be confirmed even though we are quite far from being able to directly create and measure superpositions of gravitationally appreciable amounts of matter (hereafter: “massive superpositions”), and of course very far from being able to probe the Planck scale where quantum gravity effects dominate. More precisely, the idea is to demonstrate (assuming assumptions) that the gravitational field can be used to transmit quantum information from one system to another in the sense that the effective quantum channel is not entanglement breaking.

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.
[Edit: See also the November 2021 errata.]

Although I’m not sure they would phrase it this way, the key idea for me was that merely protecting massive superpositions from decoherence is actually not that hard; sufficient isolation can be achieved in lots of systems.… [continue reading]

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Ground-state cooling by Delic et al. and the potential for dark matter detection

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The implacable Aspelmeyer group in Vienna announced a gnarly achievement in November (recently published):

Cooling of a levitated nanoparticle to the motional quantum ground state
Uroš Delić, Manuel Reisenbauer, Kahan Dare, David Grass, Vladan Vuletić, Nikolai Kiesel, Markus Aspelmeyer
We report quantum ground state cooling of a levitated nanoparticle in a room temperature environment. Using coherent scattering into an optical cavity we cool the center of mass motion of a 143 nm diameter silica particle by more than 7 orders of magnitude to n_x = 0.43 \pm 0.03 phonons along the cavity axis, corresponding to a temperature of 12 μK. We infer a heating rate of \Gamma_x/2\pi = 21\pm 3 kHz, which results in a coherence time of 7.6 μs – or 15 coherent oscillations – while the particle is optically trapped at a pressure of 10^{-6} mbar. The inferred optomechanical coupling rate of g_x/2\pi = 71 kHz places the system well into the regime of strong cooperativity (C \approx 5). We expect that a combination of ultra-high vacuum with free-fall dynamics will allow to further expand the spatio-temporal coherence of such nanoparticles by several orders of magnitude, thereby opening up new opportunities for macroscopic quantum experiments.
[EDIT: The same group has more recently achieved ground-state cooling with real-time control feedback.]

Ground-state cooling of nanoparticles in laser traps is a very important milestone on the way to producing large spatial superpositions of matter, and I have a long-standing obsession with the possibility of using such superpositions to probe for the existence of new particles and forces like dark matter. In this post, I put this milestone in a bit of context and then and then toss up a speculative plot for the estimated dark-matter sensitivity of a follow-up to Delić et al.’s device.

One way to organize the quantum states of a single continuous degree of freedom, like the center-of-mass position of a nanoparticle, is by their sensitivity to displacements in phase space.… [continue reading]

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My talk on dark matter decoherence detection

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I gave a talk recently on Itay’s and my latests results for detecting dark matter through the decoherence it induces in matter interferometers.

Quantum superpositions of matter are unusually sensitive to decoherence by tiny momentum transfers, in a way that can be made precise with a new diffusion standard quantum limit. Upcoming matter interferometers will produce unprecedented spatial superpositions of over a million nucleons. What sorts of dark matter scattering events could be seen in these experiments as anomalous decoherence? We show that it is extremely weak but medium range interaction between matter and dark matter that would be most visible, such as scattering through a Yukawa potential. We construct toy models for these interactions, discuss existing constraints, and delineate the expected sensitivity of forthcoming experiments. In particular, the OTIMA interferometer developing at the University of Vienna will directly probe many orders of magnitude of parameter space, and the proposed MAQRO satellite experiment would be vastly more sensitive yet. This is a multidisciplinary talk that will be accessible to a non-specialized audience.
[Download MP4]If you ever have problems finding the direct download link for videos on PI’s website (they are sometimes missing), this Firefox extension seems to do the trick.a  

Relevant paper on the diffusion SQL is here: arXiv:1504.03250. The main dark matter paper is still a work in progress.

Footnotes

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  1. If you ever have problems finding the direct download link for videos on PI’s website (they are sometimes missing), this Firefox extension seems to do the trick.↵
… [continue reading]
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Standard quantum limit for diffusion

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I just posted my newest paper: “Decoherence from classically undetectable sources: A standard quantum limit for diffusion” (arXiv:1504.03250). [Edit: Now published as PRA 92, 010101(R) (2015).] The basic idea is to prove a standard quantum limit (SQL) that shows that some particles can be detected through the anomalous decoherence they induce even though they cannot be detected with any classical experiment. Hopefully, this is more evidence that people should think of big spatial superpositions as sensitive detectors, not just neat curiosities.

Here’s the abstract:

In the pursuit of speculative new particles, forces, and dimensions with vanishingly small influence on normal matter, understanding the ultimate physical limits of experimental sensitivity is essential. Here, I show that quantum decoherence offers a window into otherwise inaccessible realms. There is a standard quantum limit for diffusion that restricts some entanglement-generating phenomena, like soft collisions with new particle species, from having appreciable classical influence on normal matter. Such phenomena are classically undetectable but can be revealed by the anomalous decoherence they induce on non-classical superpositions with long-range coherence in phase space. This gives strong, novel motivation for the construction of matter interferometers and other experimental sources of large superpositions, which recently have seen rapid progress. Decoherence is always at least second order in the coupling strength, so such searches are best suited for soft, but not weak, interactions.

Here’s Figure 2:

Standard quantum limit for forces and momentum diffusion. A test mass is initially placed in a minimal uncertainty wavepacket with a Wigner distribution W(x,p) over phase space (top) that contains the bulk of its mass within a 2\sigma-contour of a Gaussian distribution (dashed black line).
… [continue reading]
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Decoherence detection and micromechanical resonators

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In this post I want to lay out why I am a bit pessimistic about using quantum micromechanical resonators, usually of the optomechanical variety, for decoherence detection. I will need to rely on some simple ideas from 3-4 papers I have “in the pipeline” (read: partially written TeX files) that seek to make precise the sense in which decoherence detection allows us to detect classical undetectable phenomena, and to figure out exactly what sort of phenomena we should apply it to. So this post will sound vague without that supporting material. Hopefully it will still be useful, at least for the author.

The overarching idea is that decoherence detection is only particularly useful when the experimental probe can be placed in a superposition with respect to a probe’s natural pointer basis. Recall that the pointer basis is the basis in which the density matrix of the probe is normally restricted to be approximately diagonal by the interaction with the natural environment. Classically detectable phenomena are those which cause transitions within the pointer basis, i.e. driving the system from one pointer state to another. Classically undetectable phenomena are those which cause pure decoherence with respect to this basis, i.e. they add a decoherence factor to off-diagonal terms in this basis, but preserve on-diagonal terms.

The thing that makes this tricky to think about is that the pointer basis is overcomplete for most physically interesting situations, in particular for any continuous degree of freedom like the position of a molecule or a silicon nanoparticle. It’s impossible to perfectly localize a particle, and the part of the Hamiltonian that fights you on this, p^2/2m, causes a smearing effect that leads to the overcompleteness.… [continue reading]

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Undetected photon imaging

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Lemos et al. have a relatively recent letterG. Lemos, V. Borish, G. Cole, S. Ramelow, R. Lapkiewicz, and A. Zeilinger, “Quantum imaging with undetected photons”, Nature 512, 409 (2014) [ arXiv:1401.4318 ].a   in Nature where they describe a method of imaging with undetected photons. (An experiment with the same essential quantum features was performed by Zou et al.X. Y. Zou, L. J. Wang, and L. Mandel, “Induced coherence and indistinguishability in optical interference”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 318 (1991) [ PDF ].b   way back in 1991, but Lemos et al. have emphasized its implications for imaging.) The idea is conceptually related to decoherence detection, and I want to map one onto the other to flesh out the connection. Their figure 1 gives a schematic of the experiment, and is copied below.

Figure 1 from Lemos et al.: ''Schematic of the experiment. Laser light (green) splits at beam splitter BS1 into modes a and b. Beam a pumps nonlinear crystal NL1, where collinear down-conversion may produce a pair of photons of different wavelengths called signal (yellow) and idler (red). After passing through the object O, the idler reflects at dichroic mirror D2 to align with the idler produced in NL2, such that the final emerging idler f does not contain any information about which crystal produced the photon pair. Therefore, signals c and e combined at beam splitter BS2 interfere. Consequently, signal beams g and h reveal idler transmission properties of object O.''

The first two paragraphs of the letter contain all the meat, encrypted and condensed into an opaque nugget of the kind that Nature loves; it stands as a good example of the lamentable way many quantum experimental articles are written.… [continue reading]

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A dark matter model for decoherence detection

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[Added 2015-1-30: The paper is now in print and has appeared in the popular press.]

One criticism I’ve had to address when proselytizing the indisputable charms of using decoherence detection methods to look at low-mass dark matter (DM) is this: I’ve never produced a concrete model that would be tested. My analysis (arXiv:1212.3061) addressed the possibility of using matter interferometry to rule out a large class of dark matter models characterized by a certain range for the DM mass and the nucleon-scattering cross section. However, I never constructed an explicit model as a representative of this class to demonstrate in detail that it was compatible with all existing observational evidence. This is a large and complicated task, and not something I could accomplish on my own.

I tried hard to find an existing model in the literature that met my requirements, but without luck. So I had to argue (with referees and with others) that this was properly beyond the scope of my work, and that the idea was interesting enough to warrant publication without a model. This ultimately was successful, but it was an uphill battle. Among other things, I pointed out that new experimental concepts can inspire theoretical work, so it is important that they be disseminated.

I’m thrilled to say this paid off in spades. Bateman, McHardy, Merle, Morris, and Ulbricht have posted their new pre-print “On the Existence of Low-Mass Dark Matter and its Direct Detection” (arXiv:1405.5536). Here is the abstract:

Dark Matter (DM) is an elusive form of matter which has been postulated to explain astronomical observations through its gravitational effects on stars and galaxies, gravitational lensing of light around these, and through its imprint on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

… [continue reading]