Experimental detection of the discreteness of time

Tuesday, Apr 30th

Marios Christodoulou, University of Hong Kong
Title: The possibility of experimental detection of the discreteness of time
PDF of the talk (230K)
Audio+Slides of the talk (21M)

By Jorge Pullin, LSU

One of the most striking properties of quantum mechanics is that a system that classically can be in only two possible states, A and B, can, at the quantum level, also be in a "superposition" of A and B. If one measures what state it is in, one will get A with a certain probability and B with another. This led to the famous "Schroedinger cat" thought experiment in which the cat is in a state in which it is both alive and dead until one measures it. Such superpositions are not seen in everyday macroscopic life -like in the case of a cat- because interactions with the environment quickly determine the state of the system before we can measure it. They definitely exist and are needed to explain the microscopic world. With improvements in quantum technologies however, physicists are starting to construct systems of increasing size that can be in a quantum superposition. There is even talk of preparing not quite a Schroedinger cat, but a Schroedinger bacterium.

An interesting situation to consider in these types of superpositions of states is what happens when one takes gravity into account. One could conceivably have a mass that is in a superposition of two states corresponding to the mass in different positions in space. What would be the resulting gravitational field? Would it correspond to the mass in one position or the other? We know we cannot couple classical and quantum theories consistently so to address this problem one needs to consider quantum states of the gravitational field.

What this talk explored is that the "Schroedinger bacterium" types of experiments can potentially be sensitive to the structure of space-time at very short distances when one considers the quantum nature of gravity. They therefore offer an unexpected possibility of probing certain conjectured behaviors. For instance, if time were discrete, these types of experiments could see their results modified, even if the discreteness is at the "Planck level" (the basic unit of time at the Planck level is the Planck time, or 10^-44 seconds, for comparison the best atomic clocks can probe only up to 10^-19 seconds). This opens new possibilities for probing quantum gravitational effects with low energy experiments in the lab.