Berlin 2005 – scientific programme

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GR: Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 15: Experimentelle Tests

GR 15.8: Talk

Tuesday, March 8, 2005, 15:45–16:00, TU BH262

Sagnac Effect of Gödel’s Universe — •E. Kajari¹, R. Walser¹, W. P. Schleich¹, and A. Delgado² — ¹Abteilung für Quantenphysik, Universität Ulm, 89069 Ulm, Germany — ²Departamento de Física, Universidad de Concepción, Casilla 160-C, Concepción, Chile

A Sagnac interferometer serves as a measuring device for any kind of rotation, either due a rotation of the reference frame or the curvature of spacetime. In General Relativity coordinates have no physical meaning any more and so the question arises, how to express the Sagnac effect in terms of observable quantities. For this purpose, we choose proper time delays of light rays as our measurable quantities. In this context, we compare the Sagnac effect on a circular light path for a rotating reference frame in Minkowski spacetime with an analogous experiment performed by a resting observer in Gödel’s spacetime [1]. Surprisingly, we find for both cases nearly the same quantitative result, although the two underlying spacetime structures differ significantly [2].

[1] K. Gödel, Rev. Mod. Phys. 21, 447 (1949)

[2] E. Kajari, R. Walser, W.P. Schleich, A. Delgado, Gen. Rel. Grav. 36, 2289 (2004)