Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 75: Matter Wave Optics II

Q 75.4: Talk

Friday, March 27, 2015, 15:15–15:30, K/HS2

Interference of quantum clocks and universality of free fall — •Albert Roura, Enno Giese, Wolfgang P. Schleich, and the QUANTUS Team — Institut für Quantenphysik, Universität Ulm

By preparing appropriate superpositions of their internal states, particles employed in matter-wave interferometry can also behave as quantum clocks. Differences in the proper time along the branches of the interferometer lead then to a reduction of contrast in the interferometry measurements. It has been argued that when this difference is due to the gravitational redshift, the effect can probe aspects of the interplay between quantum mechanics and general relativity which have not been tested experimentally so far [1]. In this talk we will bring to light the direct relationship between the aforementioned reduction of contrast due to the gravitational redshift in matter-wave interferometry with quantum clocks and the universality of free fall. Furthermore, it will be shown that the parameters characterizing possible deviations from the standard result for the gravitational redshift in this context can be more easily measured in tests of the universality of free fall with quantum systems [2,3].

The QUANTUS project is supported by the German Space Agency (DLR) with funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) under grant number 50WM1136.

[1] M. Zych et al., Nat. Commun. 2, 505 (2011)

[2] D. Schlippert et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 203002 (2014)

[3] D. N. Aguilera et al., Class. Quant. Grav. 31, 115010 (2014)