Schrodinger＇s thought experiment to prepare a cat in a superposition of both alive and dead states reveals profound consequences of quantum mechanics and has attracted enormous interests. Here we propose a straight- ...Schrodinger＇s thought experiment to prepare a cat in a superposition of both alive and dead states reveals profound consequences of quantum mechanics and has attracted enormous interests. Here we propose a straight- forward method to create quantum superposition states of a living microorganism by putting a small cryopreserved bacterium on top of an electromechanical oscillator. Our proposal is based on recent developments that the center- of-mass oscillation of a 15-pro-diameter aluminum mem- brane has been cooled to its quantum ground state （Teufel et al. in Nature 475：359, 2011）, and entangled with a microwave field （Palomaki et al. in Science 342：710, 2013）. A microorganism with a mass much smaller than the mass of the electromechanical membrane will not signifi- cantly affect the quality factor of the membrane and can be cooled to the quantum ground state together with themembrane. Quantum superposition and teleportation of its center-of-mass motion state can be realized with the help of superconducting microwave circuits. More importantly, the internal states of a microorganism, such as the electron spin of a glycine radical, can be entangled with its center-of- mass motion and teleported to a remote microorganism. Our proposal can be realized with state-of-the-art tech- nologies. The proposed setup is a quantum-limited mag- netic resonance force microscope. Since internal states of an organism contain information, our proposal also pro- vides a scheme for teleporting information or memories between two remote organisms.展开更多
基金the support from Purdue University and helpful discussions with G.Csathy,F.Robicheaux, C.Greene,and V.ShalaevZQY is funded by the National Basic Research Program of China (2011CBA00300 and 2011CBA00302)the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11105136, 11474177 and 61435007)
文摘Schrodinger＇s thought experiment to prepare a cat in a superposition of both alive and dead states reveals profound consequences of quantum mechanics and has attracted enormous interests. Here we propose a straight- forward method to create quantum superposition states of a living microorganism by putting a small cryopreserved bacterium on top of an electromechanical oscillator. Our proposal is based on recent developments that the center- of-mass oscillation of a 15-pro-diameter aluminum mem- brane has been cooled to its quantum ground state （Teufel et al. in Nature 475：359, 2011）, and entangled with a microwave field （Palomaki et al. in Science 342：710, 2013）. A microorganism with a mass much smaller than the mass of the electromechanical membrane will not signifi- cantly affect the quality factor of the membrane and can be cooled to the quantum ground state together with themembrane. Quantum superposition and teleportation of its center-of-mass motion state can be realized with the help of superconducting microwave circuits. More importantly, the internal states of a microorganism, such as the electron spin of a glycine radical, can be entangled with its center-of- mass motion and teleported to a remote microorganism. Our proposal can be realized with state-of-the-art tech- nologies. The proposed setup is a quantum-limited mag- netic resonance force microscope. Since internal states of an organism contain information, our proposal also pro- vides a scheme for teleporting information or memories between two remote organisms.
