Leggett-Garg tests for macrorealism: Interference experiments and the simple harmonic oscillator

Leggett-Garg (LG) tests for macrorealism were originally designed to explore quantum coherence on the macroscopic scale. Interference experiments and systems modeled by harmonic oscillators provide useful examples of situations in which macroscopicity has been approached experimentally and are readily turned into LG tests for a single dichotomic variable Q. Applying this approach to the double-slit experiment in which a noninvasive measurement at the slits is included, we exhibit LG violations. We find that these violations are always accompanied by destructive interference. The converse is not true in general and we find that there are nontrivial regimes in which there is destructive interference but the two-time LG inequalities are satisfied, which implies that it is in fact often possible to assign (indirectly determined) probabilities for the interferometer paths. Similar features have been observed in recent work involving a LG analysis of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and we compare with those results. We extend the analysis to the triple-slit experiment again finding LG violations, and we also exhibit examples of some surprising relationships between LG inequalities and NSIT conditions that do not exist for dichotomic variables. For the simple harmonic oscillator, we find an analytically tractable example showing a two-time LG violation with a gaussian initial state, echoing in simpler form recent results of Bose et al.

Automated summary

LG tests are used to explore quantum coherence on the macroscopic scale, with examples from interference experiments and harmonic oscillator systems. Violations of LG inequalities are found to be accompanied by destructive interference, with nontrivial regimes where destructive interference exists but the inequalities are satisfied. Recent analyses on Mach-Zehnder interferometers show similar features, while surprising relationships between LG inequalities and NSIT conditions are observed for non-dichotomic variables. Further analysis on a simple harmonic oscillator demonstrates two-time LG violations with a gaussian initial state.