An optical lattice clock embedded in the curved spacetime formed by the earth’s gravity. Dynamical interplay between photon-mediated interactions and gravitational redshift can lead to entanglement generation and frequency synchronization dynamics. (Credit: Steven Burrows/Rey and Ye groups)
A team of leading physicists from JILA, NIST, and the University of Colorado Boulder, led by Fellows Jun Ye and Ana Maria Rey, in collaboration with researchers from Leibniz University Hannover, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Innsbruck, has proposed practical protocols to study the effects of relativity on quantum entanglement in optical atomic clocks.
Their groundbreaking research, published in Physical Review Letters, investigates how gravitational redshift—a core principle of Einstein’s theory of relativity—affects quantum interactions among atoms. The findings reveal that the interplay between gravity and quantum mechanics can lead to unexpected phenomena, including atomic synchronization and quantum entanglement among particles.
This study represents a significant step toward understanding quantum effects in relativistic settings, with potential applications in high-precision timekeeping, quantum communication, and fundamental physics research.
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Bridging the gap between quantum mechanics and general relativity is a central pursuit in modern physics. Optical lattice clocks, renowned for their unparalleled accuracy, are emerging as crucial experimental tools in this endeavor. These clocks utilize laser lattices to trap atoms and manipulate their quantum states, while also being susceptible to gravitational redshift, a relativistic phenomenon. By meticulously measuring the resulting frequency shifts, scientists can investigate the interplay between quantum mechanics and gravity. While relativistic effects on individual atoms are known, the impact on entangled quantum systems remains a frontier of research.
“One of our key findings is that interactions between atoms can help to lock them together so that now they behave as a unified system instead of ticking independently due to the gravitational redshift,” explains Dr. Anjun Chu, a former JILA graduate student, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago and the paper’s first author. “This is really cool because it directly shows the interplay between quantum interactions and gravitational effects.”
“The interplay between general relativity [GR] and quantum entanglement has puzzled physicists for years,” Rey adds. “The challenge lies in the fact that GR corrections in most tabletop experiments are minuscule, making them extremely difficult to detect. However, atomic clocks are now reaching unprecedented precision, bringing these elusive effects within measurable range. Since these clocks simultaneously interrogate many atoms, they provide a unique platform to explore the intersection of GR and many-body quantum physics. In this work, we investigated a system where atoms interact by exchanging photons within an optical cavity. Interestingly, we found out that while individual interactions alone can have no direct effect on the ticking of the clock, their collective influence on the redshift can significantly modify the dynamics and even generate entanglement among the atoms which is very exciting.”
While this study revealed the initial interactions between these two fields of physics, the protocols developed could help refine experimental techniques, making them even more precise—with applications ranging from quantum computing to fundamental physics experiments.
“Detecting this GR-facilitated entanglement would be a groundbreaking achievement, and our theoretical calculations suggest that it is within reach of current or near-term experiments,” says Rey.
Future experiments could explore how particles behave under different conditions or how interactions can amplify gravitational effects, bringing us closer to unifying the two great pillars of modern physics.
