Nanomechanical test of quantum linearity

Abstract

Spontaneous wavefunction collapse theories provide the possibility to resolve the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. However, the best experimental tests have been limited by thermal fluctuations and have operated at frequencies far below those conjectured to allow the proposed cosmological origin of collapse to be identified. Here we propose to use high-frequency nanomechanical resonators to surpass these limitations. We consider a specific implementation that uses a breathing mode of a quantum optomechanical system cooled to near its motional ground state. The scheme combines phonon counting with efficient mitigation of technical noise, including nonlinear photon conversion and photon coincidence counting. It can resolve the exquisitely small phonon fluxes required for a conclusive test of collapse models as well as testing the hypothesis of a cosmological origin of the collapse noise.