Schrodinger's Cat Closer To Reality?

Shipud writes "A group from the University of Oxford is proposing a scheme to achieve quantum superposition in a large object, according to Nature - not as large as Schrodinger's cat, but about ten-thousandth of a square millimiter, some 10^14 atoms. Quantum superposition is the phenomenon in which a photon passing through a beam splitter to takes two paths at once, inconceivable in the macroscopic world. William Marshall and co-workers suggest to mount a tiny mirror on a springy arm, so that the power of a single photon will be enough to oscillate it. When that photon is superposed, it transfers its superposition to the mirror, which will be quantum superposed: at two places at once. Wave particle duality has already been shown in Buckminster fullerenes, a 60 atom compound. Are we getting closer to quantum computers?"

Comments

Yeah...

[Kiriwas]

Achieving superposition is great, but how long is it maintainable? To get truly useful quantum computers, we need states that can be maintained that way, for longer periods of time (or so at least some proposed versions say). fp?

heating up counts as a measurement

[QEDog]

The cantilever (vibrating arm) is connected to something (the outside). Even if you cool it down a lot, to prevent thermal effects from the outside, the vibrations of the cantilever will heat up the system, and this counts as an observation. The paper doesn't mention how to correct this.