Physicists at the University of Innsbruck have succeeded in creating hot Schrödinger cat states in a superconducting microwave resonator.
The quantum superposition principle allows us to prepare a system in a superposition of two arbitrary states. The paradigmatic example is the superposition of two coherent states. While the superposition of such states is typically called a Schrödinger cat state, in Erwin Schrödinger's original thought experiment, the cat — a body-temperature and out-of-equilibrium system — is prepared in a superposition of two mixed states dominated by classical fluctuations. Physicists at the University of Innsbruck have now succeeded in creating hot Schrödinger cat states in a superconducting microwave resonator. Schrödinger cat states are a fascinating phenomenon in quantum physics in which a quantum object exists simultaneously in two different states. In Erwin Schrödinger's thought experiment, it is a cat that is alive and dead at the same time. In real experiments, such simultaneity has been seen in the locations of atoms and molecules and in the oscillations of electromagnetic resonators. Previously, these analogues to Schrödinger's thought experiment were created by first cooling the quantum object to its ground state, the…