Decoherence of Atomic Ensembles in Optical Lattice Clocks by Gravity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how gravitational effects cause decoherence in atomic ensembles within optical lattice clocks, enabling the observation of gravitationally induced quantum decoherence with high stability clocks.

Contribution

It introduces a method to observe gravitationally induced decoherence in atomic ensembles using high-stability optical lattice clocks and single-layer imaging.

Findings

Gravity causes measurable dephasing in atomic ensembles.

Decoherence limits clock stability to around 10^{-19}.

First observation of gravitational decoherence in quantum states.

Abstract

Optical lattice clocks can now resolve the height difference below 1 mm within an atomic ensemble by means of gravitational redshift with integration over sufficient amount of time. Further improvement in the stability enables the clocks to resolve the height difference of subsystems within an atomic ensemble that is conventionally interrogated as a single coherent spin state in a single Ramsey sequence, resulting in the dephasing of the coherent spin state. This effect is observable with a clock of a stability of $\lesssim 10^{-21}$ by introducing a single-layer-resolved imaging system for a three-dimensional optical lattice, and limits the 1 s stability of the clock around $10^{-19}$ for an atomic ensemble distributing symmetrically for the three axes, which is also a signal of the decoherence. With atoms in an entangled state, this can be the first observation of the decoherence of a quantum state by a gravitational effect, and the suppression of other systematic shifts to observe this decoherence seems feasible.