Schrödinger's Cat Paradox Reaches New Sensitivity Milestone

Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China have created a long-lived Schrödinger-cat state using 173Yb atoms in an optical lattice, achieving minute-scale coherence times. This advancement significantly enhances the sensitivity of quantum metrology, approaching the Heisenberg limit, and offers potential applications in atomic magnetometry, quantum computations, and exploring physics beyond the Standard Model.