An optically resolvable Schr\"odinger's cat from Rydberg dressed cold atom clouds

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the creation of a mesoscopic Schr"odinger's cat state using Rydberg dressed cold atom clouds, enabling optical resolution of quantum superpositions at a scale visible via imaging.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate and detect spatial Schr"odinger's cat states in cold atom clouds through hyperfine-state interactions and Rydberg dressing.

Findings

Formation of a superposition of two cloud configurations separated by micrometers.

Coherence of the superposition confirmed through recombination and interference.

Mesoscopic superposition state observable with absorption imaging.

Abstract

In Rydberg dressed ultra-cold gases, ground state atoms inherit properties of a weakly admixed Rydberg state, such as sensitivity to long-range interactions. We show that through hyperfine-state dependent interactions, a pair of atom clouds can evolve into a spin and subsequently into a spatial Schr\"odinger's cat state: The pair, containing 20 atoms in total, is in a coherent superposition of two configurations, with cloud locations separated by micrometers. The mesoscopic nature of the superposition state can be proven with absorption imaging, while the coherence can be revealed though recombination and interference of the split wave packets.