Essential role of destructive interference in the gravitationally induced entanglement

Abstract: The gravitationally induced entanglement is a type of quantum entanglement that can be generated between two mesoscopic particles using their Newtonian gravitational interaction. It has attracted a great deal of attention as a new platform for studying quantum aspects of gravity. The present paper analyzes the gravitationally induced entanglement as a pure interference effect and shows that the entanglement is induced solely by a sign change associated with the destructive quantum interference. It is also shown that when the entanglement is non-maximal, the preparation for destructive interference for one of the particles can recover a maximum visibility interference pattern for the other particle. Therefore, the non-maximally entangled state can be extremely effective for experimental testing since it can help in reducing requirements (on masses of the particles and their interaction duration, separation distances and sources) and preserve the information about entanglement at the same time. As a result, the improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio is demonstrated and a parameter that determines minimal requirements for experimental testing is defined.