ETH professor Jonathan Home and his colleagues reach deep into their bag of tricks to create so-called 'squeezed Schrödinger cats.' These quantum systems could be extremely useful for future technologies.
Quantum physics is full of fascinating phenomena. Take, for instance, the cat from the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrodinger. The cat can be dead and alive at once, since its life depends on the quantum mechanically determined state of a radioactively decaying atom which, in turn, releases toxic gas into the cat's cage. As long as one hasn't measured the state of the atom, one knows nothing about the poor cat's health either - atom and kitty are intimately "entangled" with each other.
Equally striking, if less well known, are the so-called squeezed quantum states: Normally, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle means that one cannot measure the values of certain pairs of physical quantities, such as the position and velocity of a quantum particle, with arbitrary precision. Nevertheless, nature allows a barter trade: If the particle has been appropriately prepared, then one of the quantities can be measured a little more exactly if one is willing to accept a less precise knowledge of the other quantity. In this case the preparation of the particle is known as "squeezing" because the uncertainty in one variable is reduced (squeezed).
Schrödinger's cat and squeezed quantum states are both important physical phenomena that lie at the heart of promising technologies of the future. Researchers at the ETH were now able successfully to combine both in a single experiment.
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