Entanglement Witness for the Weak Equivalence Principle

Entropy (Basel). 2023 Mar 3;25(3):448. doi: 10.3390/e25030448.

Abstract

The Einstein equivalence principle is based on the equality of gravitational and inertial mass, which has led to the universality of a free-fall concept. The principle has been extremely well tested so far and has been tested with a great precision. However, all these tests and the corresponding arguments are based on a classical setup where the notion of position and velocity of the mass is associated with a classical value as opposed to the quantum entities.Here, we provide a simple quantum protocol based on creating large spatial superposition states in a laboratory to test the quantum regime of the equivalence principle where both matter and gravity are treated at par as a quantum entity. The two gravitational masses of the two spatial superpositions source the gravitational potential for each other. We argue that such a quantum protocol is unique with regard to testing especially the generalisation of the weak equivalence principle by constraining the equality of gravitational and inertial mass via witnessing quantum entanglement.

Keywords: entanglement; equivalence principle; quantum gravity.

Grants and funding

S.B. would like to acknowledge EPSRC grants No. EP/N031105/1 and EP/S000267/1 and grant ST/W006227/1. AM’s research is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Science and Research (NWO) grant number 680-91-119. M.S. is supported by the Fundamentals of the Universe research programme within the University of Groningen. MT acknowledges funding by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2020-197).