'Quantum gravity experiments: a biased overview,' Dan Carney, LBNL

Abstract: Numerous ideas have been floated in the past decade or two to test possible signatures of quantum behavior in gravity in realistic experiments. I will give a high-level overview of this growing program. The main goal will be to bring clarity as to what exactly is being tested in each case, particularly with respect to predictions of perturbative gravity treated as a standard effective quantum field theory. Proposals covered will include tabletop experiments for coherence and entanglement in the Newton interaction, measurements of quantization effects in the gravitational radiation field, quantization effects in the cosmic microwave background, and "holographic noise" searches.

Bio: I am a theoretical physicist, originally trained in string theory-ish physics and now working near the theory-experiment intersection. I am a staff scientist at Berkeley National Lab (in terms of tenure, roughly equivalent to an assistant professor).

I use ideas from quantum information science to learn about fundamental physics. Most of my work is centered around the theory of measurement and how it applies to particle physics and gravity. This ranges from proposing new experiments (some of which are now real!) to more formal theoretical work.

Ultimately, I strongly suspect that quantum limits to measurement will play a central role in the formulation of a consistent quantum model of general relativity. In the meantime, many of these ideas have applications beyond fundamental physics, particularly to problems in quantum metrology and computing.