Earth’s Gravity Might Be Warping Quantum Mechanics, Say Physicists

> In a recent study featured in the journal PRX Quantum, researchers found that placing three quantum computers at different elevations, even with just a 1-kilometer difference in height, allows Earth’s curved gravitational field to measurably affect the quantum states shared among them. Their work outlines how this setup could offer the first direct evidence that **conventional quantum theory may need to be revised to incorporate the principles of general relativity.**

> “The strength of our procedure is that it relies on quantum information protocols that have been or will soon be **demonstrated**, so it is, in principle, relatively **straightforward to implement.**”

> Past theoretical work has suggested that curvature in space and time **alters a fundamental tenet of accepted quantum theory called the Born rule**, a principle based on the linearity of quantum theory, allowing the theory’s abstract mathematics to be translated into experimental predictions. However, observing alterations to the rule is a tricky task, as they would only appear in quantum systems with a certain level of intrinsic nonlinearity.

> “One of the Born rule’s predictions is how multiple quantum sources combine and interfere with each other,” Covey said. “In a collection of three quantum sources, the rule says that only pairwise interference – 1 and 2, 1 and 3, and 2 and 3 – are needed to describe the full system. **If gravity altered the rule, then there would be a term where all three – 1, 2, and 3 – interfere simultaneously.** Testing this scenario necessarily requires a system with three sources that span a sufficiently large nonlinearity to provide a discernible observable. This, in turn, requires the most precise sensors humans have ever made, optical atomic clocks, and elevation separations of kilometers.

> The study’s authors designed an experiment to test this prediction using so-called “W-states” – three-part quantum systems integral to many protocols in quantum computing and communication. Current quantum technology has the means to create W-states on physically separated computers using the operation of quantum teleportation. Exploiting this fact, the researchers demonstrated that gravitational time dilation would cause W-state components to display specific interference patterns, **making it clear how Born rule violations would appear in experimental data.**

This sounds suspicious to me. There are so called effective field theory methods applied to general relativity

https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09902

We expect an energy range where quantum corrections to general relativity are calculated already. When people say “we don’t understand quantum gravity” they mean strong gravity

In my opinion