Decoherence effects in non-classicality tests of gravity

Abstract

The experimental observation of a clear quantum signature of gravity is believed to be out of the grasp of current technology. However several recent promising proposals to test the possible existence of non-classical features of gravity seem to be accessible by the state-of-art table-top experiments. Among them, some aim at measuring the gravitationally induced entanglement between two masses which would be a distinct non-classical signature of gravity. We explicitly study, in two of these proposals, the effects of decoherence on the system's dynamics by monitoring the corresponding degree of entanglement. We identify the required experimental conditions necessary to perform successfully the experiments. In parallel, we account also for the possible effects of the Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model, which is the most known among the models of spontaneous wavefunction collapse. We find that any value of the parameters of the CSL model would completely hinder the generation of gravitationally induced entanglement.

Thermal quantum correlations in two gravitational cat states

“…In this paper we do not aim to discuss the issue whether the detection of gravity-induced entanglement represents a test of the quantum nature of the gravitational interaction, instead we simply pose a very simple question that we believe has not been sufficiently discussed in the literature: how do the entanglement and other quantum correlations in this scenario are affected by the environment? The subject of some environmen-tal effects in this setup has been analysed previously for the case of the decoherence time necessary to observe entanglement [20], and its robustness against stochastic fluctuations was verified [21].…”

Probing the limits of quantum theory with quantum information at subnuclear scales

“…It can equally well serve to test post-quantum scenarios involving, e.g. the gravitational field [58,59].…”