Abstract
The Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model predicts a tiny break of energy conservation via a weak stochastic force acting on physical systems, which triggers the collapse of the wave function. Mechanical oscillators are a natural way to test such a force; in particular levitated micro-mechanical oscillator has been recently proposed to be an ideal system. We report a proof-of-principle experiment with a micro-oscillator generated by a micro-sphere diamagnetically levitated in a magneto-gravitational trap under high vacuum. Due to the ultra-low mechanical dissipation, the oscillator provides a new upper bound on the CSL collapse rate, which gives an improvement of two orders of magnitude over the previous bounds in the same frequency range, and partially reaches the enhanced collapse rate suggested by Adler. Although being performed at room temperature, our experiment has already exhibits advantages over those operating at low temperatures previously reported. Our results experimentally show the potential of magneto-gravitational levitated mechanical oscillator as a promising method for testing collapse model. Further improvements in cryogenic experiments are discussed.
Highlights
The perceived absence of macroscopic quantum superposition has attracted the physicists’ interests since the birth of quantum mechanics
The continuous spontaneous localization (CSL) model predicts a tiny break of energy conservation via a weak stochastic force acting on physical systems, which triggers the collapse of the wave function
Due to the ultralow mechanical dissipation, the oscillator provides a new upper bound on the CSL collapse rate, which gives an improvement of two orders of magnitude over the previous bounds in the same frequency range, and partially reaches the enhanced collapse rate suggested by Adler
Summary
The perceived absence of macroscopic quantum superposition has attracted the physicists’ interests since the birth of quantum mechanics. Levitated micro- or nanomechanical oscillators are ideal for potentially testing collapse models due to their low damping rates They recently attracted considerable theoretical interest [52,63,64,65,66], an experimental demonstration of their ability for such a purpose has not yet been performed. As we will discuss below, for rC = 10−7 m, we estimate the upper bound λ = 10−6.4 s−1 on the collapse rate at 95% confidence level, excluding part of the range of values of the CSL parameters suggested by Adler [20] This is a significant improvement with respect to the bound obtained from the gravitational-wave detector Advanced LIGO which operates at the same frequency range [42,45] and proves that magnetogravitational levitation is a strong competitive platform for testing the limits of quantum mechanics
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