2008/07/31 by Dustin Kleckner, D. Kleckner, Igor Pikovski +10 · 134 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Classical mechanics #Measure (data warehouse) #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum decoherence #Quantum mechanics #Quantum superposition #Realization (probability) #Statistical physics #Superposition principle #Theoretical physics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/10/9/095020
published in New Journal of Physics 10(9), 095020 (IOP Publishing) · 19 pages, 8 figures, published in New J. Phys. 10 095020 (2008); minor revisions to improve clarity; fixed possibly corrupted figures
openalex publication_date 2008/09/30 · arxiv created 2008/10/05 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Micro-optomechanical systems are central to a number of recent proposals for realizing quantum mechanical effects in relatively massive systems. Here, we focus on a particular class of experiments which aim to demonstrate massive quantum superpositions, although the obtained results should be generalizable to similar experiments. We analyze in detail the effects of finite temperature on the interpretation of the experiment, and obtain a lower bound on the degree of non-classicality of the cantilever. Although it is possible to measure the quantum decoherence time when starting from finite temperature, an unambiguous demonstration of a quantum superposition requires the mechanical resonator to be in or near the ground state. This can be achieved by optical cooling of the fundamental mode, which also provides a method to measure the mean phonon number in that mode. We also calculate the rate of environmentally induced decoherence and estimate the timescale for gravitational collapse mechanisms as proposed by Penrose and Diosi. In view of recent experimental advances, practical considerations for the realization of the described experiment are discussed.