Quantum Satellite Investigates the Gap Between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity

An international team of scientists has attempted to test the effects of gravity on quantum entanglement using the Micius Quantum Satellite — a first for testing quantum physics in space.

Quantum mechanics and general relativity represent the two most successful theories in 20th-century physics. But despite almost 100 years of continued experimental verification and practical application, researchers remain unable to unite the disciplines.

As general relativity describes the effects of gravity on Einstein’s four-dimensional spacetime — three dimensions of space and time — this means that a quantum theory of gravity continues to evade detection.

As the problem of unification remains unsolved, physicists put forward various models that require experimental verification.

A team of international researchers have developed a framework to test a model which may account for the breakdown of general relativity's rules on the quantum scale. They tested this framework using the quantum satellite — Micius — a Chinese project which tests quantum phenomena in space.

The research — documented in a paper published in the journal Science — represents the first meaningful quantum optical experiment testing fundamental physics between quantum theory an gravity, says Jian-Wei Pan, director of the CAS centre for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China.

Pan and his team wanted to test the event formalism model of quantum fields model — a theory that suggests that the correlation between entangled particles would collapse — a phenomenon known as decoherence — as they pass through the gravitational well of Earth. The idea is that the differences in the gravitational force would force decoherence as the particle experiencing less gravity would be able to travel with less constraint than its counterpart in an area of stronger gravity.

Pan refers to this as ‘event formalism’ and suggests that it presents a description of quantum fields existing in spacetime as…

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