Freiburg 2008 – scientific programme

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 11: Experimente zur Gravitation I

GR 11.1: Talk

Thursday, March 6, 2008, 11:50–12:10, KGI-HS 1010

The dynamics of a quantum wave packet of a neutron and the question of extra dimensions of space-time — •Tobias Jenke¹, Hartmut Abele¹, Peter Geltenbort², and Christian Plonka² — ¹Physikalisches Institut der Universität Heidelberg — ²Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France

The dynamics of a quantum mechanical wave packet bouncing off an insuperable potential wall in the gravitational field of the earth combines quantum theory with aspects of Newtonian mechanics at short distances.
We are performing an experiment to realize such a quantum bouncing ball with ultracold neutrons in a system, in which we have measured before the lowest stationary quantum states in the earth’s gravitational field. This experiment is sensitive to gravity-like forces at a length scale below 10 µm, where we already place limits.
This work was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research and Education under Contract No. 06HD187.