Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Quantum mechanics

A light sounding drum

Nature volume 471, pages 168–169 (2011)Cite this article

Subjects

In the effort to demonstrate quantum behaviour in the motion of macroscopic mechanical objects, strong coupling between the objects and an electromagnetic oscillator is advantageous. Such coupling has now been achieved. See Letter p.204

In the first lecture of his 1962 course on gravitation1, physicist Richard Feynman speculated on the possibility that the laws of quantum mechanics break down for objects heavier than a certain mass scale. Microscopic systems lighter than this mass scale would behave quantum mechanically — for example, by tunnelling through barriers and existing in two states at once. On the other hand, macroscopic mass systems above this scale could behave only in their familiar, classical way as objects localized in space. It would not be possible, even in principle, to prepare states such as that of the notorious Schrödinger cat, consisting of the simultaneous superposition of an alive and a dead feline. Invoking gravity as the enforcer of classical behaviour for macroscopic objects, Feynman combined the fundamental constants of Newton's gravitation, the speed of light and the quantum Planck constant to arrive at a quantum breakdown mass scale (known as the Planck mass) of approximately 0.01 milligrams, or about the weight of a speck of dust.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

References

  1. Feynman, R. P., Morinigo, F. B., Wagner, W. G. & Hatfield, B. Feynman Lectures on Gravitation (Westview, 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Teufel, J. D. et al. Nature 471, 204–208 (2011).

    CAS  Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Regal, C. A., Teufel, J. D. & Lehnert, K. W. Nature Phys. 4, 555–560 (2008).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Rocheleau, T. et al. Nature 463, 72–75 (2010).

    CAS  Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Dobrindt, J. M., Wilson-Rae, I. & Kippenberg, T. J. Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 263602 (2008).

    CAS  Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. O'Connell, A. D. et al. Nature 464, 697–703 (2010).

    CAS  Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Cho, A. Science 330, 1604 (2010).

    CAS  Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Armour, A. D. & Blencowe, M. P. New J. Phys. 10, 095004 (2008).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Marquardt, F. & Girvin, S. M. Physics 2, 40 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Galve, F., Pachón, L. A. & Zueco, D. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 180501 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Miles Blencowe is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, USA.,

    Miles Blencowe

Authors
  1. Miles Blencowe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Miles Blencowe.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Blencowe, M. A light sounding drum. Nature 471, 168–169 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/471168a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/471168a

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing