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ScienceQuiet 10d · day 13

Folman team tests quantum mechanics in free fall with new atom interferometer

Physicists build first experiment to measure how gravity affects quantum waves, testing a 100-year-old theoretical prediction.

newest coverage 9d agosummary written 12d ago13 pieces16 likes & upvotes1 comments MastodonNewswiresBlueskyGoogle NewsHacker News

What to know

  • A team led by Ron Folman has built the first interferometer capable of measuring how gravity affects quantum wave properties, testing a nearly century-old theoretical prediction that had been impossible to verify.
  • The experiment places a single atom in superposition—simultaneously on a free-falling path and a stationary path—allowing researchers to measure the gravitational effect on the atom's quantum phase when both paths reconverge.
  • This development resolves a longstanding experimental barrier: atom-cooling technology became available in the late 1990s, but the team needed years more to solve the technical problem of bringing the two wave paths back into contact for interference measurement.

“Even if you could do it with some tweezer or some trap, this very violent action would create so much noise that we wouldn't have known what is fake news and what is really the effect that we want to measure.”

Ron Folman, Lead physicist · Ars Technica ↗

Ron Folman Lead physicist, Ben-Gurion University of the NegevRoger PenroseRoger Penrose Collaborator, Nobel laureate

Folman team tests quantum mechanics in free fall with new atom interferometer
arstechnica.com

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  1. 1

    Folman team reports first successful quantum-gravity interferometer experiment

    Ars Technica publishes detailed reporting on the completed experiment led by Ron Folman, a physicist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, with collaborators in Germany, the UK, and the US. The team built an interferometer that puts a single atom into a superposition of two trajectories—one free-falling and one stationary—to measure how gravity affects the atom's wave-like phase property.

    “Every particle, doesn't matter if it's a car or a spaceship or an atom, is a wave.”
    — Ron Folman
    • lucidmonkey.bsky.social

      @acollierastro.bsky.social any thoughts? (or better yet a 2hr video 🙂 )

      lucidmonkey.bsky.socialBluesky12d ago1▲view on Bluesky ↗
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