Speaker
James Bateman
(University of Southampton)
Description
We are building a matterwave interferometer for 10^6 amu particles with 200 nm separation to test the superposition principle for massive particles [1] . A successful demonstration would correspond to a macroscopicity [2] mu=18 and would begin to constrain CSL lambda_CSL<1.4 · 10^r -11 Hz. I will outline the theoretical approach, describe the rationale for our design choices, and review the experimental progress so far. For particles in free-flight, our target mass appears to be a practical maximum for earth-bound experiments; I will briefly mention the MAQRO consortium which seeks to put an experiment like ours into space [3]
References
[1] Bateman, Nimmrichter, Hornberger, Ulbricht, Nat. Comm. 5, 4788 (2014)
[2] Nimmrichter & Hornberger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110,160403 (2013)
[3] Kaltenbaek et al., Exp. Astro. 34, 123 (2012).
