Observing macroscopic quantum effects in the dark
Helene Hainzer
The boundary between everyday reality and the quantum world remains unclear. The more massive an object, the more localized it becomes when being made quantum through cooling down its motion to the absolute zero. Researchers, led by Oriol Romero-Isart from the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck, propose an experiment in which an optically levitated nanoparticle, cooled to its ground state, evolves in a non-optical (“dark”) potential created by electrostatic or magnetic forces. This evolution in the dark potential is expected to rapidly and reliably generate a macroscopic quantum superposition state.