Gravitationally induced phase shift on a single photon

DOI10.1088/1367-2630/AA638FMaRDI QIDQ6157975zbMATHFDO

Authors Francesco Carlo Massa, Piotr T. Chrúsciel, Philip Walther

Publication date 12 May 2023

Published in New Journal of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.03612

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Observational and experimental questions in relativity and gravitational theory (83B05)

Abstract: The effect of the Earth's gravitational potential on a quantum wave function has only been observed for massive particles. In this paper we present a scheme to measure a gravitationally induced phase shift on a single photon travelling in a coherent superposition along different paths of an optical fiber interferometer. To create a measurable signal for the interaction between the static gravitational potential and the wave function of the photon, we propose a variant of a conventional Mach-Zehnder interferometer. We show that the predicted relative phase difference of $10^{-5}$ radians is measurable even in the presence of fiber noise, provided additional stabilization techniques are implemented for each arm of a large-scale fiber interferometer. Effects arising from the rotation of the Earth and the material properties of the fibers are analysed. We conclude that optical fiber interferometry is a feasible way to measure the gravitationally induced phase shift on a single-photon wave function, and thus provides a means to corroborate the equivalence of the energy of the photon and its effective gravitational mass.

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Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1446955 (Why is no real title available?)
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Cited in

(6)

• Weakly gravitating isotropic waveguides
• Quantum optics with one or two photons
• General relativistic effects in quantum interference of photons
• The Cauchy problem for the Proca equation in gravitating dielectric media
• On the influence of Earth’s rotation on light propagation in waveguides
• Gravitational Redshift Induces Quantum Interference

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