Entanglement Witness for the Weak Equivalence Principle

Abstract

The Einstein equivalence principle is based on the equality of gravitational mass and inertial mass, which has led to the universality of a free-fall concept. The principle has been extremely well tested so far and has been tested with a great precision. However, all these tests and the corresponding arguments are based on a classical setup where the notion of position and velocity of the mass is associated with a classical value as opposed to the quantum entities. Here, we will provide a simple protocol based on creating large spatial superposition states in a laboratory to test the fully quantum regime of the equivalence principle where both matter and gravity are treated at par as a quantum entity. We will argue that such a quantum protocol is unique with regard to testing especially the generalization of the weak equivalence principle via witnessing quantum entanglement.