Millikelvin cooling of an optically trapped microsphere in vacuum

Understand

The apparent conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics remains one of the unresolved mysteries of the physical world.

• According to recent theories, this conflict results in gravity-induced quantum state reduction of "Schr\"odinger cats", quantum superpositions of macroscopic observables.
• In recent years, great progress has been made in cooling micromechanical resonators towards their quantum mechanical ground state.
• This work is an important step towards the creation of Schr\"odinger cats in the laboratory, and the study of their destruction by decoherence.