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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie
GR 5: Experimental Gravitation II
GR 5.2: Vortrag
Montag, 17. März 2014, 15:05–15:25, SPA SR220
Quantum Weak Equivalence Principle — •Magdalena Zych1,2 and Caslav Brukner1,2 — 1Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria — 2Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria.
Equivalence between the gravitational and the inertial mass of a body, the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP), lies at the heart of both Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity and is a prerequisite for its understanding as a curvature of space-time. Beginning with Galileo's experiments WEP continues to be probed with ever increasing precision reaching nowadays the scale where quantum mechanics becomes relevant. Here we show that the classical formulation of the WEP does not apply in such a regime. The total mass of a test body includes contributions from the internal energy, which in quantum mechanics is given by a Hamiltonian operator describing the dynamics of internal degrees of freedom. We therefore introduce a quantum formulation of the WEP - equivalence between the inertial and gravitational internal energy operators. We show that the validity of the classical WEP does not imply the validity of the quantum WEP which thus requires independent experimental verification. We discuss how this goal can be achieved in quantum interference experiments with massive particles with internal structure.