Schrödinger cat states of a 16-microgram mechanical oscillator

Abstract

The superposition principle is one of the most fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. According to the Schrödinger equation, a physical system can be in any linear combination of its possible states. While the validity of this principle is routinely validated for microscopic systems, it is still unclear why we do not observe macroscopic objects to be in superpositions of states that can be distinguished by some classical property. Here we demonstrate the preparation of a mechanical resonator with an effective mass of 16.2 micrograms in Schrödinger cat states of motion, where the constituent atoms are in a superposition of oscillating with two opposite phases. We show control over the size and phase of the superposition and investigate the decoherence dynamics of these states. Apart from shedding light at the boundary between the quantum and the classical world, our results are of interest for quantum technologies, as they pave the way towards continuous-variable quantum information processing and quantum metrology with mechanical resonators.

References in corpus (7)

• Reconstruction of non-classical cavity field states with snapshots of their decoherence
• Schrödinger cat states of a 16-microgram mechanical oscillator
• Optical synthesis of large-amplitude squeezed coherent-state superpositions with minimal resources
• Spin-motion entanglement and state diagnosis with squeezed oscillator wavepackets
• Entanglement and Wigner function negativity of multimode non-Gaussian states
• Parity measurement in the strong dispersive regime of circuit quantum acoustodynamics
• Macroscopic quantum test with bulk acoustic wave resonators

Cited by in corpus (75)

• Schrödinger cat states of a 16-microgram mechanical oscillator
• Massive quantum systems as interfaces of quantum mechanics and gravity
• Fast Quantum Interference of a Nanoparticle via Optical Potential Control
• Fast Generation of GHZ-like States Using Collective-Spin XYZ Model
• Magnon squeezing by two-tone driving of a qubit in cavity-magnon-qubit systems
• Challenges and Opportunities of Gravitational Wave Searches above 10 kHz
• Limit on spatial quantum superpositions with massive objects due to phonons
• Fault-tolerant quantum computation by hybrid qubits with bosonic cat-code and single photons
• Genuine quantum non-Gaussianity and metrological sensitivity of Fock states prepared in a mechanical resonator
• Macroscopic Bell state between a millimeter-sized spin system and a superconducting qubit
• Quadrature squeezing enhances Wigner negativity in a mechanical Duffing oscillator
• Instabilities near ultrastrong coupling in microwave optomechanical cavity
• Quantum metrology with a continuous-variable system
• Minutes-scale Schr{ö}dinger-cat state of spin-5/2 atoms
• Deterministic multi-phonon entanglement between two mechanical resonators on separate substrates
• Quantum control of continuous systems via nonharmonic potential modulation
• Non-Markovian environment induced Schrödinger cat state transfer in an optical Newton's cradle
• Quantum optomechanical control of long-lived bulk acoustic phonons
• Experimental observation of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a quantum phase transition
• Resonant Schrödinger Cat States in Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics
• Non-classical correlations between photons and phonons of center-of-mass motion of a mechanical oscillator
• Spin Environment of a Superconducting Qubit in High Magnetic Fields
• Remote sensing of a levitated superconductor with a flux-tunable microwave cavity
• Nonclassical mechanical states in cavity optomechanics in the single-photon strong-coupling regime
• Thin-film quartz for high-coherence piezoelectric phononic crystal resonators
• A Physics Lab Inside Your Head: Quantum Thought Experiments as an Educational Tool
• Fluctuation-induced Forces on Nanospheres in External Fields
• Gravitational entanglement witness through Einstein ring image
• Assisted metrology and preparation of macroscopic superpositions with split spin-squeezed states
• How to read out the phonon number statistics via resonance fluorescence spectroscopy of a single-photon emitter
• Quantum gravitational decoherence of a mechanical oscillator from spacetime fluctuations
• Generation of Large Amplitude Phonon States in Quantum Acoustics
• Large amplitude mechanical coherent states and detection of weak nonlinearities in cavity optomechanics
• Optimal Phase-Insensitive Force Sensing with Non-Gaussian States
• Microscopic theory of a precessing ferromagnet for ultrasensitive magnetometry
• Current experimental upper bounds on spacetime diffusion
• Stabilization of cat-state manifolds using nonlinear reservoir engineering
• Preparation of conditionally-squeezed states in qubit-oscillator systems
• Decoherence of surface phonons in a quantum acoustic system
• Catability as a metric for evaluating superposed coherent states
• Unitary death of Schrödinger's cat
• Single-photon induced instabilities in a cavity electromechanical device
• A nanoparticle stored with an atomic ion in a linear Paul trap
• Preparing magnonic non-Gaussian states by adding a single magnon onto Gaussian states
• Low crosstalk modular flip-chip architecture for coupled superconducting qubits
• A simple gravitational self-decoherence model
• Characterizing the Multipartite Entanglement Structure of Non-Gaussian Continuous-Variable States with a Single Evolution Operator
• Tsirelson inequalities: Detecting cheating and quantumness in a single framework
• Hybrid spin-phonon architecture for scalable solid-state quantum nodes
• Manipulation of magnetic systems by quantized surface acoustic wave via piezomagnetic effect
• Hybrid optomechanical superconducting qubit system
• Scalable Generation of Massive Schrödinger Cat States via Quantum Tunneling
• Roto-translational optomechanics
• Topologically protected Bell-cat states in a simple spin model
• Generation of bipartite mechanical cat state by performing projective Bell state measurement
• Exact classical emergence from high-energy quantum superpositions
• Double-Bracket Master Equations: Phase-Space Representation and Classical Limit
• Quantum Dynamical Signatures of Topological Flow Transitions in Limit Cycle Phases
• Quantum internal vibrations in macroscopic systems with classical centers of mass
• Mechanical Squeezed-Fock Qubit: Towards Quantum Weak-Force Sensing
• Optimal strategies for transient and equilibrium quantum thermometry using Gaussian and non-Gaussian probes
• Sudden Decoherence by Resonant Particle Excitation for Testing Gravity-Induced Entanglement
• Chiral-cat-state generation via the Sagnac-Fizeau effect
• Quantum gravity inspired nonlocal quantum dynamics preserving the classical limit
• Testing the Braneworld Theory with Identical Particles
• Massive quantum superpositions using magneto-mechanics
• Quantum teleportation of cat states with binary-outcome measurements
• Quantum Acoustics with Superconducting Qubits in the Multimode Transition-Coupling Regime
• A no-go result on observing quantum superpositions
• Reservoir-Engineered Mechanical Cat States with a Driven Qubit
• Optimizing decoherence in the generation of optical Schrödinger cat states
• Generation of mechanical cat-like states via optomagnomechanics
• Strongly driven cavity quantum electrodynamical-optomechanical hybrid system
• On Schrödingerist Quantum Thermodynamics
• Loss Mechanisms in High-coherence Multimode Mechanical Resonators Coupled to Superconducting Circuits