Gravitationally induced phase shift on a single photon

DOI10.1088/1367-2630/AA638FzbMATH Open1514.83002arXiv1612.03612MaRDI QIDQ6157975FDOQ6157975

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)

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.

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

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

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

Cites Work

• The quantum theory of light.
• Ordinary differential equations and dynamical systems
• Quantum fields in curved space.
• General relativistic effects in quantum interference of photons
• Title not available (Why is that?)

Cited In (6)

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

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