Quantum states can only be prepared and observed under highly controlled conditions. A research team from Innsbruck, Austria, has now succeeded in creating so-called hot Schrödinger cat states in a superconducting microwave resonator. The study, published in Science Advances, shows that quantum phenomena can also be observed and used in less perfect, warmer conditions.
Schrödinger cat states are a fascinating phenomenon in quantum physics in which a quantum object exists simultaneously in two different states. In Erwin Schrödinger's thought experiment, it is a cat that is alive and dead at the same time.
In real experiments, such simultaneity has been seen in the locations of atoms and molecules and in the oscillations of electromagnetic resonators.
Previously, these analogs to Schrödinger's thought experiment were created by first cooling the quantum object to its ground state, the state with the lowest possible energy.
Now, researchers led by Gerhard Kirchmair and Oriol Romero-Isart have demonstrated for the first time that it is indeed possible to create quantum superpositions from thermally excited states.
"Schrödinger also assumed a living, i.e. 'hot' cat in his thought experiment," says Kirchmair from the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).
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