Stability Thresholds for Gravitationally Induced Entanglement in Shielded Setups
Jan Bulling, Marit O. E. Steiner, Julen S. Pedernales, Martin B. Plenio
TLDR
This paper analyzes how residual shield interactions and setup fluctuations limit gravitationally induced entanglement experiments, providing thresholds and mitigation.
Key contributions
- Residual shield interactions (Casimir, magnetic-dipole) and setup fluctuations severely limit GIE experiments.
- Magnetic interactions with superconducting shields are a major noise source, especially for levitated particles.
- Thermal shield vibrations can generate particle-shield correlations and mimic gravitational entanglement.
- Provides quantitative thresholds for setup fluctuations and mitigation strategies for GIE observation.
Why it matters
This paper is vital for designing future gravitationally induced entanglement experiments. It quantifies how shield interactions and setup fluctuations introduce noise, providing critical thresholds and mitigation strategies for genuine GIE detection.
Original Abstract
Proposed experiments for gravitationally induced entanglement (GIE) typically suppress direct electromagnetic interactions between two massive particles by inserting a conducting Faraday shield. For superconducting particles, their large diamagnetism requires additional magnetic shielding to screen magnetic dipolar interactions. Here, we analyze the effect of residual particle-shield interactions and show that both Casimir and magnetic-dipole interactions can severely limit GIE tests by imprinting large phases. We quantify how run-to-run positional and orientational fluctuations of the setup elements, including the shield, trapping potentials, and detectors, convert these phases into effective decoherence, strongly reducing the detectable bipartite entanglement. In particular, we show that magnetic interactions between the particles and a superconducting shield constitute a major noise source, especially relevant for levitated superconducting particles. Treating the vibrational modes of the shield quantum mechanically, we further find that thermal vibrations generate persistent particle-shield correlations and can even mediate particle-particle entanglement that can mimic a gravitational signal. Finally, we derive quantitative thresholds on the maximum tolerable positional and orientational fluctuations of the setup elements required to observe entanglement, and propose mitigation strategies including geometry optimization and shield cooling to preserve a genuine GIE signature.
📬 Weekly AI Paper Digest
Get the top 10 AI/ML arXiv papers from the week — summarized, scored, and delivered to your inbox every Monday.