Space QUEST mission proposal: Experimentally testing decoherence due to gravity
Abstract
Models of quantum systems on curved space-times lack sufficient experimental verification. Some speculative theories suggest that quantum properties, such as entanglement, may exhibit entirely different behavior to purely classical systems. By measuring this effect or lack thereof, we can test the hypotheses behind several such models. For instance, as predicted by Ralph and coworkers [T C Ralph, G J Milburn, and T Downes, Phys. Rev. A, 79(2):22121, 2009, T C Ralph and J Pienaar, New Journal of Physics, 16(8):85008, 2014], a bipartite entangled system could decohere if each particle traversed through a different gravitational field gradient. We propose to study this effect in a ground to space uplink scenario. We extend the above theoretical predictions of Ralph and coworkers and discuss the scientific consequences of detecting/failing to detect the predicted gravitational decoherence. We present a detailed mission design of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space QUEST (Space - Quantum Entanglement Space Test) mission, and study the feasibility of the mission schema.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1703.08036,
title = {Space QUEST mission proposal: Experimentally testing decoherence due to gravity},
author = {Siddarth Koduru Joshi and Jacques Pienaar and Timothy C. Ralph and Luigi Cacciapuoti and Will McCutcheon and John Rarity and Dirk Giggenbach and Jin Gyu Lim and Vadim Makarov and Ivette Fuentes and Thomas Scheidl and Erik Beckert and Mohamed Bourennane and David Edward Bruschi and Adan Cabello and Jose Capmany and Alberto Carrasco-Casado and Eleni Diamanti and Miloslav Duusek and Dominique Elser and Angelo Gulinatti and Robert H. Hadfield and Thomas Jennewein and Rainer Kaltenbaek and Michael A. Krainak and Hoi-Kwong Lo and Christoph Marquardt and Gerard Milburn and Momtchil Peev and Andreas Poppe and Valerio Pruneri and Renato Renner and Christophe Salomon and Johannes Skaar and Nikolaos Solomos and Mario Stipčević and Juan P. Torres and Morio Toyoshima and Paolo Villoresi and Ian Walmsley and Gregor Weihs and Harald Weinfurter and Anton Zeilinger and Marek Żukowski and Rupert Ursin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.08036},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
18 pages, 13 figures, included radiation damage to detectors in appendix