Heidelberg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 2: Classical Theory

GR 2.5: Vortrag

Montag, 21. März 2022, 17:20–17:40, GR-H2

On free fall of quantum matter — •Viacheslav Emelyanov — Institute of Theoretical Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Wolfgang-Gaede-Straße 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany

According to Newton's gravitational law, any object to have a non-zero gravitational mass is a source of gravity. It is a result of numerous experiments that gravitational mass is equal with good accuracy to inertial mass of a macroscopic object. Thus, all objects fall down equally fast, assuming same initial position and velocity. This circumstance is promoted to the weak equivalence principle in General Relativity, that is related to the concept of affine connection, giving in its turn the concept of geodesic corresponding to particles' trajectories in curved spacetime. However, there is an expectation that the free-fall universality may not hold for quantum matter.

In this talk, we intend to introduce our approach to quantum particle physics in curved spacetime. It is based on quantum field theory and the general principle of relativity, which are used to build a model for quantum particles in gravity. We then obtain by its means a deviation from a classical geodesic in the Earth's gravitational field. This shows that free fall depends on quantum-matter properties. Specifically, we find that the free-fall universality and the wave-packet spreading are mutually exclusive phenomena. Assuming that the latter is more fundamental, we present the first-ever estimate of the Eötvös parameter for a pair of atoms used nowadays in quantum tests of the universality of free fall in atom interferometers and compare that with recent experimental results.