A Scheme to Probe the Decoherence of a Macroscopic Object

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  • 8 December 1997
Abstract
We propose a quantum optical version of Schr\"{o}dinger's famous gedanken experiment in which the state of a microscopic system (a cavity field) becomes entangled with and disentangled from the state of a massive object (a movable mirror). We show that this setup can be used to systematically probe the rules according to which a superposition of spatially separated states of a macroscopic object decoheres. The parameter regime required to test environment-induced decoherence models is found to be potentially realizable, while that required to detect gravitationally induced collapse is beyond current technology.

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