The Challenge of Detecting Quantum Nature of Gravitational Waves

Abstract

We investigate whether squeezing can provide an observable signature of quantum gravitational waves. Because a realistic detector couples only to a particular wave-packet mode, squeezing in global source modes need not remain observable. We show that inflationary two-mode squeezing reduces to an unsqueezed thermal state in the accessible one-mode sector, phase incoherence washes out squeezing in stochastic backgrounds, and the limited coverage of the solid angle of detectors strongly suppresses squeezing from isolated sources. We then show that source squeezing is not essential, {\it i.e.}, a quantized gravitational wave can generate a positive squeezing witness if the detector state is initially prepared in a squeezed state, whereas a classical external gravitational field cannot, producing only a displacement. However, the resulting signal is bounded by the extremely small graviton--detector coupling. Thus, detector squeezing can remove the need for squeezed incident waves, but not the suppression caused by weak gravitational interaction.