Toward Quantum Superposition of Living Organisms

The most striking feature of quantum mechanics is the existence of superposition states, where an object appears to be in different situations at the same time. The existence of such states has been tested with small objects, like atoms, ions, electrons and photons, and even with molecules. More recently, it has been possible to create superpositions of collections of photons, atoms, or Cooper pairs. Current progress in optomechanical systems may soon allow us to create superpositions of even larger objects, like micro-sized mirrors or cantilevers, and thus to test quantum mechanical phenomena at larger scales. Here we propose a method to cool down and create quantum superpositions of the motion of sub-wavelength, arbitrarily shaped dielectric objects trapped inside a high--finesse cavity at a very low pressure. Our method is ideally suited for the smallest living organisms, such as viruses, which survive under low vacuum pressures, and optically behave as dielectric objects. This opens up the possibility of testing the quantum nature of living organisms by creating quantum superposition states in very much the same spirit as the original Schr\"odinger's cat "gedanken" paradigm. We anticipate our essay to be a starting point to experimentally address fundamental questions, such as the role of life and consciousness in quantum mechanics.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, published versio

Proof-of-Concept of Real-World Quantum Key Distribution with Quantum Frames

We propose and experimentally investigate a fibre-based quantum key distribution system, which employs polarization qubits encoded into faint laser pulses. As a novel feature, it allows sending of classical framing information via sequences of strong laser pulses that precede the quantum data. This allows synchronization, sender and receiver identification, and compensation of time-varying birefringence in the communication channel. In addition, this method also provides a platform to communicate implementation specific information such as encoding and protocol in view of future optical quantum networks. Furthermore, we report on our current effort to develop high-rate error correction.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, 4 table