Abstract
Models of quantum systems on curved space-times lack sufficient experimental verification. Some speculative theories suggest that quantum correlations, such as entanglement, may exhibit different behavior to purely classical correlations in curved space. By measuring this effect or lack thereof, we can test the hypotheses behind several such models. For instance, as predicted by Ralph et al [] and Ralph and Pienaar [], a bipartite entangled system could decohere if each particle traversed through a different gravitational field gradient. We propose to study this effect in a ground to space uplink scenario. We extend the above theoretical predictions of Ralph and coworkers and discuss the scientific consequences of detecting/failing to detect the predicted gravitational decoherence. We present a detailed mission design of the European Space Agency’s Space QUEST (Space—Quantum Entanglement Space Test) mission, and study the feasibility of the mission scheme.
Highlights
Consider a quantum mechanical system consisting of two entangled photons
The singlephoton signals are collected by a receiving telescope, separated by a polarization analysis module (consisting of an adjustable half wave plate (HWP) and a polarizing beam splitter (PBS)), and detected by single-photon detectors after they pass through narrowband interference filters (IF), which remove the majority of background noise
In this paper we have evaluated various methods to measure the gravitational decoherence effect
Summary
Commons Attribution 3.0 1 Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria licence. 10 York Centre for Quantum Technologies, Department of Physics, University of York, YO10 5DD Heslington, United Kingdom. 13 Space Communications Laboratory, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), 4-2-1, Nukui-. 15 Department of Optics, Faculty of Science, Palacky University, 17. 19 Institute for Quantum Computing and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada. 20 Vienna Center of Quantum Science and Technology, Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. 23 Department of Physics, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia. 24 Optical and Quantum Laboratory, Munich Research Center, Huawei Technologies Duesseldorf GmbH Riesstrasse 25, 80992 Munich, Germany.
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