Role of matter coherence in entanglement due to gravity

Abstract

We investigate the quantum nature of gravity in terms of the coherence of quantum objects. As a basic setting, we consider two gravitating objects each in a superposition state of two paths. The evolution of objects is described by the completely positive and trace-preserving (CPTP) map with a population-preserving property. This property reflects that the probability of objects being on each path is preserved. We use the ℓ1-norm of coherence to quantify the coherence of objects. In the present paper, the quantum nature of gravity is characterized by an entangling map, which is a CPTP map with the capacity to create entanglement. We introduce the entangling-map witness as an observable to test whether a given map is entangling. We show that, whenever the gravitating objects initially have a finite amount of the ℓ1-norm of coherence, the witness tests the entangling map due to gravity. Interestingly, we find that the witness can test such a quantum nature of gravity, even when the objects do not get entangled. This means that the coherence of gravitating objects always becomes the source of the entangling map due to gravity. We further discuss a decoherence effect and an experimental perspective in the present approach.