What happens when quantum mechanics and relativity meet?
Taking both paths
Experiment put atoms in a superposition of trajectories to find out.
How do you get two quantum states to interfere when one involves moving and the other doesn't? Credit: ALIOUI Mohammed Elamine
Almost a hundred years ago, physicists theorized out what free fall should do to a quantum wave. If the solution they came up with is wrong, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of gravity flatly contradict each other. But testing it has been impossible because nobody has managed to build an interferometer that could perform the necessary measurement.
Now, a team led by Ron Folman, a physicist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, with collaborators in Germany, the UK, and the US, including Nobel laureate Roger Penrose, has done it. They built a new interferometer that gives a single atom two possible paths at once: one that involves a free fall, and another where it is...
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