I had the pleasure of being part of the UniKORN committee that organised a panel discussion last week on the question of optomechanical interfaces as a tool to test Quantum Mechanics & Gravity.

For over a century, physicists have grappled with the apparent conflict between Gravity and Quantum mechanics. Specifically, our inability to come up with a testable model of quantum gravity.

The panelist comprised some of the critical voices in the field, both from those developing novel experiments and theories to address this question. Through this discussion, however, one point that seemed to continue to allude to me was, why do we think that gravity should be quantizable at all? This is motivated by the two pinnacle papers asking this very important question and suggesting very novel experiments to determine if gravity is quantum at all [1][2]. The discussion also made apparent that there is a real need for that “anomalous data” that points us to the next direction in better understanding gravity and quantum mechanics.

Watch all the BLOCK 1 talks we have organised and a panel discussion hosted by the UniKORN committee on the youtube channel.

References
[1] Bose, Sougato, et al. “Spin entanglement witness for quantum gravity.” Physical review letters 119.24 (2017): 240401.
[2] Marletto, Chiara, and Vlatko Vedral. “Gravitationally induced entanglement between two massive particles is sufficient evidence of quantum effects in gravity.” Physical review letters 119.24 (2017): 240402.