It is shown that the motion of a multielectron atom in an external gravitational field in a good approximation is described by system of the Mathisson-Papapetrou equations, if we put as a classical angular momentum of the atom the expectation value of the operator of the full angular momentum of the system, which includes spins of the nucleus and electrons, and orbital momentums of the electrons in the atom.
Kinematically forbidden processes may be allowed in the presence of external gravitational fields. These ca be taken into account by introducing generalized particle momenta. The corresponding transition probabilities can then be calculated to all orders in the metric deviation from the field-free expressions by simply replacing the particle momenta with their generalized counterparts. The procedure applies to particles of any spin and to any gravitational fields. transition probabilities, emission power, and spectra are, to leading order, linear in the metric deviation. It is also shown how a…
The first order perturbations of the energy levels of a hydrogen atom in central internal gravitational field are investigated. The internal gravitational field is produced by the mass of the atomic nucleus. The energy shifts are calculated for the relativistic 1S, 2S, 2P, 3S, 3P, 3D, 4S and 4P levels with Schwarzschild metric. The calculated results show that the gravitational corrections are sensitive to the total angular momentum quantum number.
The first order perturbations of the energy levels of a stationary hydrogen atom in static external gravitational field, with Schwarzschild metric, are investigated. The energy shifts are calculated for the relativistic 1S, 2S, 2P, 3S, 3P, 3D, 4S, 4P, 4D and 4F levels. The results show that the energy-level shifts of the states with total angular momentum quantum number 1/2 are all zero, and the ratio of absolute energy shifts with total angular momentum quantum number 5/2 is 1:4:5. This feature can be used to help us to distinguish the gravitational effect from other effect.
In the study of covariant wave equations, linear gravity manifests itself through the metric deviation $γ_{μν}$ and a two-point vector potential $K_λ$ itself constructed from $γ_{μν}$ and its derivatives. The simultaneous presence of the two gravitational potentials is non contradictory. Particles also assume the character of quasiparticles and $K_λ$ carries information about the matter with which it interacts. We consider the influence of $K_λ$ on the dispersion relations of the particles involved, the particles' motion, quantum tunneling through a horizon, radiation, energy-momentum dissipat…
We present a new general design approach of a broad-band detector of gravitational radiation that relies on two atom interferometers separated by a distance L. In this scheme, only one arm and one laser will be used for operating the two atom interferometers. We consider atoms in the atom interferometers not only as perfect inertial reference sensors, but also as highly stable clocks. Atomic coherence is intrinsically stable and can be many orders of magnitude more stable than a laser. The unique one-laser configuration allows us to then apply time-delay interferometry to the responses of the …
We consider a hydrogen atom in the background spacetimes generated by an infinitely thin cosmic string and by a point-like global monopole. In both cases, we find the solutions of the corresponding Dirac equations and we determine the energy levels of the atom. We investigate how the geometric and topological features of these spacetimes leads to shifts in the energy levels as compared with the flat Minkowski spacetime.
We explore, in the framework of linearized quantum gravity, the induced gravitational interaction between two gravitationally polarizable objects in their ground states in the presence of an external quantized gravitational radiation field. The interaction energy decreases as $r^{-5}$ in the near regime, and oscillates with a decreasing amplitude proportional to $r^{-1}$ in the far regime, where $r$ is the distance between the two objects. The interaction can be either attractive or repulsive depending on the propagation direction, polarization and frequency of the external gravitational field…
Vaidya metric as an integral part of the Expansive Nondecelerative Universe (ENU) model enables to localize the energy of gravitational field and, subsequently, to find a deep interrelationship between quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity. In the present paper, stemming from the ENU model, ionisation energy and energy of hyperfine splitting of the hydrogen atom, energy of the elementary quantum of action, as well as the proton and electron mass are independently expressed through the mass of the planckton, Z and W bosons and fundamental constants.
We consider a class of proposed gravitational wave detectors based on multiple atomic interferometers separated by large baselines and referenced by common laser systems. We compute the sensitivity limits of these detectors due to intrinsic phase noise of the light sources, non-inertial motion of the light sources, and atomic shot noise and compare them to sensitivity limits for traditional light interferometers. We find that atom interferometers and light interferometers are limited in a nearly identical way by intrinsic phase noise and that both require similar mitigation strategies (e.g. mu…
We investigate, in the framework of linearized quantum gravity, the induced quantum gravitational interaction between two ground-state objects with permanent quadrupole moments, which are subjected to an external gravitational radiation field. Compared with the nonpolar case, there exists an additional term in the leading-order field-induced interobject interaction between two polar objects. This term arises when a real graviton is scattered by the same object center with coupling between the two objects occurring via the exchange of a single virtual graviton, and the interaction is thus relev…
The dipole coupling term between a system of N particles with total charge zero and the electromagnetic field is derived in the presence of a weak gravitational field. It is shown that the form of the coupling remains the same as in flat space-time if it is written with respect to the proper time of the observer and to the measurable field components. Some remarks concerning the connection between the minimal and the dipole coupling are given.
The gravitational field is usually neglected in the calculation of atomic energy levels as its effect is much weaker than the electromagnetic field, but that is not the case for a particle orbiting a black hole. In this work, the canonical quantization of a massive and massless particles under gravitational field exerted by this tiny but very massive object, both neutral and charged, is carried out. By using this method, a very rare exact result of the particle's quantized energy can be discovered. The presence of a very strong attractive field and also the horizon make the energy complex valu…
We obtain a family of exact solutions describing magnetized black holes in an external gravitational field. Locally the solutions can be interpreted as representing the near-horizon region of a black hole, which interacts with a surrounding matter distribution producing a strong magnetic field. Thus, the solutions reflect the influence of both a gravitational and an electromagnetic external potential in the strong field regime. The static members in the family are generalizations of the Schwarzschild solution in the described environment, while the rotating ones generalize the magnetized Reiss…
Black hole as elementary particle is a fairly glamorous idea. For ordinary black holes, a surrounding particle inevitably penetrates into the interior of the hole since the center of the hole is an infinite potential well. For the first time we demonstrate that an extreme dilatonic black hole in spherical symmetry perfectly behaves as an atom, in the sense that its surrounding cloud of particles are completely stable. Thus we reach a spherical cloud of dilatonic black hole. We find exact wave functions of the cloud for arbitrary gravitational fine structure constant $μM$, and clear the underly…
We consider the so-called semiclassical variant of general relativity, where gravitational field is not quantized but matter is quantized, for the simplest composite quantum body - a hydrogen atom. We create a stationary electron quantum state in the atom in the absence of gravitational field and study its time evolution in the presence of the field, using the local Lorentz invariance property of spacetime. It is shown that this state with a definite energy in the absence of gravitational field is not anymore a stationary state in the field. Therefore, quantum measurements of passive gravitati…
We investigate the possibility to use atom interferometers to detect gravitational waves. We discuss the interaction of gravitational waves with an atom interferometer and analyze possible schemes.
It is discussed how systems of quantum-correlated (entangled)particles or atoms behave in external gravitational fields and what gravitational effects may exist in such systems. An experimental setup is proposed which improves the sensitivity of the Ramsey interferometer by the usage of quantum-correlated atoms. Entanglement of $n$ atoms improves the sensitivity to small phase shifts in $n^2$ times. This scheme may be used for observing gravity-induced phase shifts in laboratory.
In this work we study the influence of the newtonian noise on atom interferometers applied to the detection of gravitational waves, and we compute the resulting limits to the sensitivity in two different configurations: a single atom interferometer, or a pair of atom interferometers operated in a differential configuration. We find that for the instrumental configurations considered, and operating in the frequency range [0.1-10] Hz, the limits would be comparable to those affecting large scale optical interferometers.
We present a gravitationally rigorous and clear answer, in the negative, to the question whether gravimetry with atom interferometers is equivalent to the the measurement of the relative gravitational time dilation of two clocks separated in space. Though matter and light waves, quantum states and oscillator clocks are quantum synonymous through the Planck-Einstein-de Broglie relations and the equivalence principle, there are crucial differences in the context of tests of gravitation theories.
From the principle of equivalence, Einstein predicted that clocks slow down in a gravitational field. Since the general theory of relativity is based on the principle of equivalence, it is essential to test this prediction accurately. Muller, Peters and Chu claim that a reinterpretation of decade old experiments with atom interferometers leads to a sensitive test of this gravitational redshift effect at the Compton frequency. Wolf et al dispute this claim and adduce arguments against it. In this article, we distill these arguments to a single fundamental objection: an atom is NOT a clock ticki…
Hohensee, Chu, Peters and Müller have submitted a comment (arXiv:1112.6039 [gr-qc]) on our paper "Does an atom interferometer test the gravitational redshift at the Compton frequency?", Classical and Quantum Gravity 28, 145017 (2011), arXiv:1009.2485 [gr-qc]. Here we reply to this comment and show that the main result of our paper, namely that atom interferometric gravimeters do not test the gravitational redshift at the Compton frequency, remains valid.
Atomic interference experiments can probe the gravitational redshift via the internal energy splitting of atoms and thus give direct access to test the universality of the coupling between matter-energy and gravity at different spacetime points. By including possible violations of the equivalence principle in a fully quantized treatment of all degrees of freedom, we characterize how the sensitivity to gravitational redshift violations arises in atomic clocks and atom interferometers, as well as their underlying limitations. Specifically, we show that: (i.) Contributions beyond linear order to …
In this paper, we study the phenomenon of quantum interference in the presence of external gravitational fields described by alternative theories of gravity. We analyze both non-relativistic and relativistic effects induced by the underlying curved background on a superposed quantum system. In the non-relativistic regime, it is possible to come across a gravitational counterpart of the Bohm-Aharonov effect, which results in a phase shift proportional to the derivative of the modified Newtonian potential. On the other hand, beyond the Newtonian approximation, the relativistic nature of gravity …
Atom interferometers allow the measurement of the acceleration of freely falling atoms with respect to an experimental platform at rest on Earth's surface. Such experiments have been used to test the universality of free fall by comparing the acceleration of the atoms to that of a classical freely falling object. In a recent paper, Müller, Peters and Chu [Nature {\bf 463}, 926-929 (2010)] argued that atom interferometers also provide a very accurate test of the gravitational redshift (or universality of clock rates). Considering the atom as a clock operating at the Compton frequency associated…
In a recent paper, H. Mueller, A. Peters and S. Chu [A precision measurement of the gravitational redshift by the interference of matter waves, Nature 463, 926-929 (2010)] argued that atom interferometry experiments published a decade ago did in fact measure the gravitational redshift on the quantum clock operating at the very high Compton frequency associated with the rest mass of the Caesium atom. In the present Communication we show that this interpretation is incorrect.
We present a research of the time evolution of the redshift of light received from the binary star that moves in the external gravitational field of Kerr black hole. We formulate a method for the solution of inverse problem: calculating of the parameters of relative motion of stars in binary system using the redshift data. The considered formalism has no restrictions on the character of the motion of the center of mass of a compact binary star and can be applied even in the case of binary motion close to the event horizon of a supermassive black hole. The efficiency of the method is illustrate…
A construction of the Coulomb-Breit Hamiltonian for a pair of fermions, considered as a quantum two-body system, immersed in an arbitrary background gravitational field described by Einstein's General Relativity is presented. Working with Fermi normal coordinates for a freely falling observer in a spacetime region where there are no background sources and ignoring the gravitational back-reaction of the system, the effective Coulomb-Breit Hamiltonian is obtained starting from the S-matrix element corresponding to the one-photon exchange between the charged fermionic currents. The contributions …
We show that Wolf et al.'s 2011 analysis in Class. Quant. Grav. v28, 145017 does not support their conclusions, in particular that there is "no redshift effect" in atom interferometers except in inconsistent dual Lagrangian formalisms. Wolf et al. misapply both Schiff's conjecture and the results of their own analysis when they conclude that atom interferometers are tests of the weak equivalence principle which only become redshift tests if Schiff's conjecture is invalid. Atom interferometers are direct redshift tests in any formalism.
Recently, it has been proposed that space-based atomic sensors may be used to detect gravitational waves. These proposals describe the sensors either as clocks or as atom interferometers. Here, we seek to explore the fundamental similarities and differences between the two types of proposals. We present a framework in which the fundamental mechanism for sensitivity is identical for clock and atom interferometer proposals, with the key difference being whether or not the atoms are tightly confined by an external potential. With this interpretation in mind, we propose two major enhancements to d…
Freely falling point-like objects converge toward the center of the Earth. Hence the gravitational field of the Earth is inhomogeneous, and possesses a tidal component. The free fall of an extended quantum mechanical object such as a hydrogen atom prepared in a high principal-quantum-number state, i.e. a circular Rydberg atom, is predicted to fall more slowly than a classical point-like object, when both objects are dropped from the same height above the Earth's surface. This indicates that, apart from transitions between quantum states, the atom exhibits a kind of quantum mechanical incompres…
In this letter we present a computation of the phase induced by test masses of different geometry, in the framework of non-newtonian gravitation, on an ideal separated arms atom interferometer. We deduce the related limits on the non-newtonian gravitational strength in the sub-millimeter region for the potential range. These limits would be comparable with the best existing experimental limits but with the advantage of using a microscopic probe.
Freely falling point-like objects converge towards the center of the Earth. Hence the gravitational field of the Earth is inhomogeneous, and possesses a tidal component. The free fall of an extended quantum object such as a hydrogen atom prepared in a high principal-quantum-number stretch state, i.e., a circular Rydberg atom, is predicted to fall more slowly that a classical point-like object, when both objects are dropped from the same height from above the Earth. This indicates that, apart from "quantum jumps," the atom exhibits a kind of "quantum incompressibility" during free fall in inhom…
It is shown that the rate of corrections to the hydrogen atom and harmonic oscillator due to profound quantum-gravitational effect of space-time dimension running/reduction coincides well with those obtained by means of the minimum-length deformed quantum mechanics. The rate of corrections are pretty much the same within the accuracy by which we can judge the quantum-gravitational corrections at all. Such a convergence of results makes the concept of space-time dimension running more appreciable. As a remarkable distinction, the energy shift due to dimension reduction has the opposite sign as …
We consider an unexplored aspect of the mass equivalence principle in the quantum realm, its connection with atomic stability. We show that if the gravitational mass were different from the inertial one, a Hydrogen atom placed in a constant gravitational field would become unstable in the long term. In contrast, independently of the relation between the two masses, the atom does not become ionized in an uniformly accelerated frame. This work, in the line of previous analyses studying the properties of quantum systems in gravitational fields, contributes to the extension of that programme to in…
The entanglement harvesting protocol is an operational way to probe vacuum entanglement. This protocol relies on two atoms, modelled by Unruh-DeWitt detectors, that are initially unentangled. These atoms then interact locally with the field and become entangled. If the atoms remain spacelike separated, any entanglement between them is a result of entanglement that is `harvested' from the field. Thus, quantifying this entanglement serves as a proxy for how entangled the field is across the regions in which the atoms interacted. Using this protocol, it is demonstrated that while the transition p…
Superradiant instabilities may create clouds of ultralight bosons around rotating black holes, forming so-called "gravitational atoms." It was recently shown that the presence of a binary companion can induce resonant transitions between bound states of these clouds, whose backreaction on the binary's orbit leads to characteristic signatures in the emitted gravitational waves. In this work, we show that the interaction with the companion can also trigger transitions from bound to unbound states of the cloud -- a process that we refer to as "ionization" in analogy with the photoelectric effect …
Atom-interferometer gravitational-wave (GW) observatory, as a new design of ground-based GW detector for the near future, is sensitive at a relatively low frequency for GW observations. Taking the proposed atom interferometer Zhaoshan Long-baseline Atom Interferometer Gravitation Antenna (ZAIGA), and its illustrative upgrade (Z+) as examples, we investigate how the atom interferometer will complement ground-based laser interferometers in testing the gravitational dipole radiation from binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. A test of such kind is important for a better understanding of the strong e…
We analytically compute the orbital effects induced on the motion of a spinning particle geodesically traveling around a central rotating body by the general relativistic two-body spin-spin and spin-orbit interactions. We use the weak-field and slow-motion leading-order approximation. Neither assumptions on the eccentricity nor the inclination of the orbit of the particle have been assumed. No specific orientations of the spins involved have been chosen. (Abridged)
Earlier it was shown that the entropy of an ideal gas, contained in a box and moving in a gravitational field, develops an area dependence when it approaches the horizon of a static, spherically symmetric spacetime. Here we extend the above result in two directions; viz., to (a) the stationary axisymmteric spacetimes and (b) time dependent cosmological spacetimes evolving asymptotically to the de Sitter or the Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetimes. While our calculations are exact for the stationary axisymmetric spacetimes, for the cosmological case we present an analytical expression of the entr…
We obtain a new exact solution of the 5D Einstein equations in vacuum describing a distorted Myers-Perry black hole with a single angular momentum. Locally, the solution is interpreted as a black hole distorted by a stationary $U(1)\times U(1)$ symmetric distribution of external matter. Technically, the solution is constructed by applying a 2-fold Bäcklund transformation on a 5D distorted Minkowski spacetime as a seed. The physical quantities of the solution are calculated, and a local Smarr-like relation on the black hole horizon is derived. It possesses the same form as the Smarr-like relati…
The gravitational field of a laser pulse, although not detectable at the moment, comes with a peculiar feature which continues to attract attention; cause and effect propagate with the same speed, that of light. A particular result of this feature is that the gravitational field of an emitted laser pulse and the gravitational effect of the emitter's energy-momentum change are intimately entangled. In this article, a specific example of an emission process is considered - an atom, modeled as a point mass, emits two counter-propagating pulses. The corresponding curvature and the effect on massiv…
A previous calculation of Newton's gravitational coupling constant G is generalized. This generalization makes it possible to have "atoms of two-dimensional space" with an integer dimension d_{atom} of the internal space, where the case d_{atom}=1 is excluded. Given the quantum of area l^2, the final formula for G is inversely proportional to the logarithm of the integer d_{atom}. The generalization used may be interpreted as a modification of the energy equipartition law of the microscopic degrees of freedom responsible for gravity, suggesting some form of long-range interaction between these…
