Relative acceleration noise mitigation for nanocrystal matter-wave interferometry: Applications to entangling masses via quantum gravity

Abstract

Matter-wave interferometers with large momentum transfers, irrespective of specific implementations, will face a universal dephasing due to relative accelerations between the interferometric mass and the associated apparatus. Here we propose a solution that works even without actively tracking the relative accelerations: putting both the interfering mass and its associated apparatus in a freely falling capsule, so that the strongest inertial noise components vanish due to the equivalence principle. In this setting, we investigate two of the most important remaining noise sources: (a) the noninertial jitter of the experimental setup and (b) the gravity-gradient noise. We show that the former can be reduced below desired values by appropriate pressures and temperatures, while the latter can be fully mitigated in a controlled environment. We finally apply the analysis to a recent proposal for testing the quantum nature of gravity [S. Bose et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240401 (2017)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240401] through the entanglement of two masses undergoing interferometry. We show that the relevant entanglement witnessing is feasible with achievable levels of relative acceleration noise.