Study: Spin Entanglement Witness for Quantum Gravity Citation: Sougato Bose, Anupam Mazumdar, Gavin W. Morley, Hendrik Ulbricht, Marko Toroš, Mauro Paternostro

Study: Spin Entanglement Witness for Quantum Gravity Citation: Sougato Bose, Anupam Mazumdar, Gavin W. Morley, Hendrik Ulbricht, Marko Toroš, Mauro Paternostro, Andrew A. Geraci, Peter F. Barker, M. S. Kim, and Gerard Milburn Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240401 – Published 13 December 2017. Link: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240401 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240401 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240401 Abstract: Understanding gravity in the framework of quantum mechanics is one of the great challenges in modern physics. However, the lack of empirical evidence has lead to a debate on whether gravity is a quantum entity. Despite varied proposed probes for quantum gravity, it is fair to say that there are no feasible ideas yet to test its quantum coherent behavior directly in a laboratory experiment. Here, we introduce an idea for such a test based on the principle that two objects cannot be entangled without a quantum mediator. We show that despite the weakness of gravity, the phase evolution induced by the gravitational interaction of two micron size test masses in adjacent matter-wave interferometers can detectably entangle them even when they are placed far apart enough to keep Casimir-Polder forces at bay. We provide a prescription for witnessing this entanglement, which certifies gravity as a quantum coherent mediator, through simple spin correlation measurements. --- Study: Gravitationally Induced Entanglement between Two Massive Particles is Sufficient Evidence of Quantum Effects in Gravity Citation: C. Marletto and V. Vedral Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240402 – Published 13 December 2017. Link: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240402 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240402 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240402 Abstract: All existing quantum-gravity proposals are extremely hard to test in practice. Quantum effects in the gravitational field are exceptionally small, unlike those in the electromagnetic field. The fundamental reason is that the gravitational coupling constant is about 43 orders of magnitude smaller than the fine structure constant, which governs light-matter interactions. For example, detecting gravitons—the hypothetical quanta of the gravitational field predicted by certain quantum-gravity proposals—is deemed to be practically impossible. Here we adopt a radically different, quantum-information-theoretic approach to testing quantum gravity. We propose witnessing quantumlike features in the gravitational field, by probing it with two masses each in a superposition of two locations. First, we prove that any system (e.g., a field) mediating entanglement between two quantum systems must be quantum. This argument is general and does not rely on any specific dynamics. Then, we propose an experiment to detect the entanglement generated between two masses via gravitational interaction. By our argument, the degree of entanglement between the masses is a witness of the field quantization. This experiment does not require any quantum control over gravity. It is also closer to realization than detecting gravitons or detecting quantum gravitational vacuum fluctuations.