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SUMMARY:Probing Foundations of Spacetime with Atom Interferometers - Jerem
 iah Mitchell (Cavendish Laboratory and Queen's College\, Cambridge)
DTSTART:20250512T133000Z
DTEND:20250512T143000Z
UID:TALK231994@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Adrian Kent
DESCRIPTION:Quantum sensors such as atom interferometers have been rapidly
  evolving into extremely precise platforms for simultaneously testing foun
 dations of quantum mechanics and gravity. Their first generations were pre
 cise tabletop inertial sensors measuring accelerations and rotations of th
 e ultracold atom ensembles sourced by their environment. These branched of
 f into mobile and long-baseline instruments capable of acting as precise g
 ravimeters and platforms for testing the Einstein Equivalence Principle. F
 uture detectors coming online in the next few years will extend the scale 
 of the instruments from 10s of meters to 100s and 1000s of meters opening 
 the door for further investigations of the macroscopic validity of quantum
  mechanics and tests of relativistic gravity. In this talk I will introduc
 e some examples of these long-baseline atom interferometers\, discuss the 
 foundations of quantum mechanics and general relativity that may be probed
 \, and finally present the current state of these experiments and technica
 l/environmental limitations that exist. AION and MAGIS-100 are terrestrial
  long-baseline detectors being developed to search for ultralight dark mat
 ter and gravitational waves\, but fundamentally their operation relies on 
 macroscopic manipulation of quantum systems in free-fall. In this context\
 , I will present some models of decoherence\, via gravitational collapse a
 nd time-dilation\, and tests of the nonlinearity of gravity that have been
  proposed and the limits of these quantum sensors for experimental tests a
 nd the plethora of noise sources competing with these signals. Finally\, s
 ome open questions and routes of inquiry will be addressed.
LOCATION:MR9\,  Centre for Mathematical Sciences\, Wilberforce Road\, Camb
 ridge
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