Heralded Generation of Macroscopic Superposition States in a Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensate

authored by

L. Pezzè, M. Gessner, P. Feldmann, C. Klempt, L. Santos, A. Smerzi

Abstract

Macroscopic superposition states enable fundamental tests of quantum mechanics and hold a huge potential in metrology, sensing, and other quantum technologies. We propose to generate macroscopic superposition states of a large number of atoms in the ground state of a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate. Measuring the number of particles in one mode prepares with large probability highly entangled macroscopic superposition states in the two remaining modes. The macroscopic superposition states are heralded by the measurement outcome. Our protocol is robust under realistic conditions in current experiments, including finite adiabaticity, particle loss, and measurement uncertainty.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Theoretical Physics
Institute of Quantum Optics
QuantumFrontiers
CRC 1227 Designed Quantum States of Matter (DQ-mat)

External Organisation(s)

QSTAR
CNR National Institute of Optics (INO)
European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS)
PSL Research University

Type

Article

Journal

Physical Review Letters

Volume

123

ISSN

0031-9007

Publication date

31.12.2019

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Physics and Astronomy

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1712.03864 (Access: Open)
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.260403 (Access: Closed)