A Scheme to Probe the Decoherence of a Macroscopic Object
Abstract
We propose a quantum optical version of Schr\"{o}dinger's famous gedanken experiment in which the state of a microscopic system (a cavity field) becomes entangled with and disentangled from the state of a massive object (a movable mirror). Despite the fact that a mixture of Schr\"{o}dinger cat states is produced during the evolution (due to the fact that the macroscopic mirror starts off in a thermal state), this setup allows us to systematically probe the rules by which a superposition of spatially separated states of a macroscopic object decoheres. The parameter regime required to test environment-induced decoherence models is found to be close to those currently realizable, while that required to detect gravitationally induced collapse is well beyond current technology.
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/9712017,
title = {A Scheme to Probe the Decoherence of a Macroscopic Object},
author = {S. Bose and K. Jacobs and P. L. Knight},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/9712017},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
Much expanded version, macroscopic mirror masses, to appear in Phys. Rev. A (tent: May 99)