Measuring Quantum Gravity with Entanglement

A 4-panel comic to explain a NIST research proposal for detecting quantum gravity through entanglement.

Project Notes

The captions for the panels:

  1. In an atomic interferometer, the atom's wave function is split into left and right arms. The left and right arms are then recombined, producing an interference pattern.
  2. When the experiment begins, the atom's wave function is unaffected by the pendulum. This means the two arms of the single atom interfere fully with each other.
  3. If gravitational attraction indeed causes an entanglement between the pendulum and the atom, the pendulum will partially measure the position of the atom, concentrating it into one arm or the other.
  4. After each half oscillation period, the pendulum will return to where it started, losing all memory of the gravitational entanglement it had created and restoring full interference.