2019/01/31 by Dominic Branford, Christos N. Gagatsos, Jai Grover +3 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Classical mechanics #Computer science #Diffusion #Economics #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Mechanism (biology) #Momentum (technical analysis) #Optics #Physics #Position (finance) #Position and momentum space #Quadrature (astronomy) #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #Space (punctuation) #Statistical physics #Theoretical physics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.100.022129
published as Phys. Rev. A 100, 022129 (2019)
openalex publication_date 2019/08/30 · arxiv created 2019/09/02 · arxiv updated 2020/11/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Momentum diffusion is a possible mechanism for driving macroscopic quantum systems towards classical behavior. Experimental tests of this hypothesis rely on a precise estimation of the strength of this diffusion. We show that quantum-mechanical squeezing offers significant improvements, including when measuring position. For instance, with 10\phantom\rule3.33333pt0exdB of mechanical squeezing, experiments would require a tenth of proposed free-fall times. Momentum measurement is better by an additional factor of three, while another quadrature is close to optimal. These have particular implications for the space-based MAQRO proposal---where it could rule out the spontaneous collapse theory due to Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber---as well as terrestrial optomechanical sensing.