Gravitational time dilation in quantum clock interferometry with entangled multi-photon states and quantum memories
Summarize this article with:
Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.02470 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 5 Jan 2026] Title:Gravitational time dilation in quantum clock interferometry with entangled multi-photon states and quantum memories Authors:Mustafa Gündoğan, Roy Barzel, Dennis Rätzel View a PDF of the paper titled Gravitational time dilation in quantum clock interferometry with entangled multi-photon states and quantum memories, by Mustafa G\"undo\u{g}an and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Gravitational time dilation implies that clocks held at different heights accumulate different proper times. We analyze a memory-assisted quantum clock interferometer in which a frequency-bin photonic clock is stored in two vertically separated quantum memories for a controllable duration, such that the joint state evolves in a quantum superposition of two proper times. After retrieval, the photonic modes interfere in a Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer, for which we derive analytic expressions for the resulting multiphoton detection statistics. Extending this HOM-based scheme from entangled photon pairs to frequency-entangled 2N-photon inputs, we show that the proper-time dependent phase is amplified by a factor N, leading to an N-times faster collapse and revival of the interference signal compared with the two-photon case. Incorporating finite memory efficiency and lifetime, we identify regimes where this modulation remains observable. For parameters compatible with demonstrated Rb and Cs memories and achievable optical frequency separations, the first collapse occurs for height differences in the order of 10-100 m with subsecond to few-second storage times, while suitable rare-earth ion and alkali memory combinations can reduce the required height to the few-metre scale. These results establish near-term laboratory conditions for observing entanglement dynamics driven by gravitational time dilation in a photonic platform. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2601.02470 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.02470v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.02470 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Mustafa Gündoğan [view email] [v1] Mon, 5 Jan 2026 19:00:01 UTC (628 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Gravitational time dilation in quantum clock interferometry with entangled multi-photon states and quantum memories, by Mustafa G\"undo\u{g}an and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)