Gravity in the Quantum Lab

Abstract

At the beginning of the previous century, Newtonian mechanics fell victim to two new revolutionary theories, Quantum Mechanics (QM) and General Relativity (GR). Both theories have transformed our view of physical phenomena, with QM accurately predicting the results of experiments taking place at small length scales, and GR correctly describing observations at larger length scales. However, despite the impressive predictive power of each theory in their respective regimes, their unification still remains unresolved. Theories and proposals for their unification exist but we are lacking experimental guidance towards the true unifying theory. Probing GR at small length scales where quantum effects become relevant is particularly problematic but recently there has been a growing interest in probing the opposite regime, QM at large scales where relativistic effects are important. This is principally due to the fact that experimental techniques in quantum physics have developed rapidly in recent years with the promise of quantum technologies. Here we review recent advances in experimental and theoretical work on quantum experiments that will be able to probe relativistic effects of gravity on quantum properties, playing particular attention to the role of Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime (QFTCS) in describing these experiments. Interestingly, theoretical work using QFTCS has illustrated that these quantum experiments could be used to enhance measurements of gravitational effects, such as Gravitational Waves (GWs). Furthermore, verification of such enhancements, as well as other QFTCS predictions in quantum experiments, would provide the first direct validation of this limiting case of quantum gravity, several decades after it was initially proposed.

25 pages, 2 figures, based on an invited review for Advances in Physics: X, I. Fuentes previously published as I. Fuentes-Guridi and I. Fuentes-Schuller

References in corpus (24)

• Sideband Cooling Micromechanical Motion to the Quantum Ground State
• Systematic evaluation of an atomic clock at 2e-18 total uncertainty
• Quantum teleportation using active feed-forward between two Canary Islands
• Large Quantum Superpositions and Interference of Massive Nanometer-Sized Objects
• Quantum Metrology for Gravitational Wave Astronomy
• Testing General Relativity with Atom Interferometry
• A New Method for Gravitational Wave Detection with Atomic Sensors
• Quantum Test of the Universality of Free Fall
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• Measurement of the Gravity-Field Curvature by Atom Interferometry
• Relativistic Quantum Teleportation with Superconducting Circuits
• Quantum estimation of the Schwarzschild space-time parameters of the Earth
• Feedback cooling of the normal modes of a massive electromechanical system to submillikelvin temperature
• Quantum optics experiments to the International Space Station ISS: a proposal
• The Robinson Gravitational Wave Background Telescope (BICEP): a bolometric large angular scale CMB polarimeter
• Generation and analysis of correlated pairs of photons on board a nanosatellite
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Cited by in corpus (19)

• Non-Gaussianity as a signature of a quantum theory of gravity
• Gravimetry through non-linear optomechanics
• Quantum correlation of light mediated by gravity
• Gravity Probe Spin: Prospects for measuring general-relativistic precession of intrinsic spin using a ferromagnetic gyroscope
• Quantum-metrology estimation of spacetime parameters of the Earth outperforming classical precision
• Dynamical response of Bose-Einstein condensates to oscillating gravitational fields
• Gravity enhanced quantum spatial target detection
• Frequency spectrum of an optical resonator in a curved spacetime
• Complementarity and causal propagation of decoherence by measurement in relativistic quantum field theories
• Decay of quantum sensitivity due to three-body loss in Bose-Einstein condensates
• Quantum Decoherence of Phonons in Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Relativistic quantum clocks
• Lamb shift as a witness for quantum noninertial effects
• Deformed Gazeau-Klauder Schrödinger-Cat States with Modified Commutation Relations
• Signatures of Quantum Gravity in the Gravitational Self-Interaction of Photons
• Mass-energy equivalence in gravitationally bound quantum states of the neutron
• Composite particles with minimum uncertainty in spacetime
• Taming Thiemann's Hamiltonian constraint in canonical loop quantum gravity: reversibility, eigenstates and graph-change analysis
• Simulating superluminal propagation of Dirac particles using trapped ions