Correlated Quantum Sensing at the Seemingly Classical Limit

It is a difficult task to detect the indivisible quanta of weakly interacting radiation fields, and even more challenging to probe their quantum statistics. Nevertheless, if barely functional high-quality resonant detectors are feasible for weakly interacting radiation fields, they do come with certain statistical advantages to probe quantum effects at the seemingly classical limit of a large number of quanta of the incoming radiation field. We present correlated counting, homodyne, and heterodyne detection strategies using high-quality resonant quantum harmonic detectors operating at this limit, initialized in bolometry-inspired zero-mean preparations such as thermal states. We compare the bolometric regime of good resonant harmonic detectors in quantum optics to the bolometric regime of barely functional resonant mass quadrupole oscillators as detectors for quantum gravity. Simple statistical tests are proposed using symmetric correlators for two and three such barely functional resonant mass detectors that could reveal the complementary quantum noise characteristics of gravitons in tabletop experiments.

K. P. Athulya, Sreenath K. Manikandan · 2026