Testing Quantum Coherence in Stochastic Electrodynamics with Squeezed Schrödinger Cat States

Authors

Wayne Cheng-Wei Huang, Texas A & M University - College StationFollow
Herman Batelaan, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

4-5-2019

Citation

W. C. Huang and H. Batelaan. Testing Quantum Coherence in Stochastic Electrodynamics with Squeezed Schrödinger Cat States, Atoms 7, 42 (2019).

doi:10.3390/atoms7020042

Comments

Copyright 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license

Abstract

The interference pattern in electron double-slit diffraction is a hallmark of quantum mechanics. A long-standing question for stochastic electrodynamics (SED) is whether or not it is capable of reproducing such effects, as interference is a manifestation of quantum coherence. In this study, we used excited harmonic oscillators to directly test this quantum feature in SED. We used two counter-propagating dichromatic laser pulses to promote a ground-state harmonic oscillator to a squeezed Schrödinger cat state. Upon recombination of the two well-separated wavepackets, an interference pattern emerges in the quantum probability distribution but is absent in the SED probability distribution. We thus give a counterexample that rejects SED as a valid alternative to quantum mechanics.