Internationale Perspektiven auf Quantenexperimente im freien Fall
Forschende aus ganz Europa diskutierten am ZARM Experimente an der Schnittstelle zwischen Quantenphysik und Gravitation – ein interdisziplinärer Workshop mit Expert:innen aus Theorie und Experiment, unterstützt von COST und Quantum Frontiers.
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The workshop “Quantum Systems in Free Fall” was conducted from May 6th to May 8th at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) of the University of Bremen in Germany. The workshop brought together experimentalists and theoreticians to design novel experiments that will resolve fundamental problems at the interface of quantum mechanics and gravity.
The major theme of this workshop was the interaction of quantum systems with gravity. It leads naturally to questions about whether gravity should itself be described by quantum theory, and if yes, how does a quantum spacetime look like? From the theoretical perspective, there are numerous models which describe the interplay between quantum systems and gravity, especially in the regime of low energies and weak gravitational fields that is closer to experiments. The challenge is to identify the most appropriate experiments that can provide answers to the fundamental questions, and then to design a roadmap for their implementation.
The workshop focused on experiments with quantum systems in free fall, and it identified aspects of existing theoretical models that can be carried out in realistic experiments. It determined the technical specifications of experiments that can test different models, and discussed smoking gun signatures of new physics, that is, physics beyond the standard model and general relativity. The workshop identified matter wave interferometry in free fall as one of the most promising techniques to achieve those goals, and it laid down plans for intensive future collaboration along those lines.
The event with 30 international participants was jointly organized by international research networks funded by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). The goal of these COST Actions is to search for traces of Quantum Gravity on largest and smallest scales (BridgeQG) and to find a consistent framework of relativistic quantum information theory (RQI). In addition to COST, the Cluster of Excellence Quantum Frontiers (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC-2123) supported the workshop financially.
For more information please check the website of the workshop: https://www.zarm.uni-bremen.de/cost2025/
