Freiburg 2024 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 54: Quantum Optics in Space
Q 54.1: Talk
Thursday, March 14, 2024, 14:30–14:45, HS 3219
Two-Beam Interference in Rindler Spacetime — •Yatin Kumar Jaiswal1,2 and Sebastian Ulbricht1,2 — 1Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig, Germany — 2Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany
The study of polarized light in curved spacetime has been a promising endeavour in the past with theoretical predictions like the gravitational analogue of the Faraday effect and the Spin Hall effect. Motivated by these successes, we conduct a similar investigation for light propagation in Earth’s gravity at laboratory scales. One way to do that is to model Earth’s local gravity as spacetime perceived by a homogeneously accelerated observer, i.e., the Rindler Spacetime. This model is justified because the Equivalence Principle posits that experiments done in a constantly accelerated frame or in a homogenous gravitational field are indistinguishable. In this contribution, we study the propagation of light in Rindler Spacetime and investigate the interference of two light waves with arbitrary polarizations in the Geometrical Optics regime. We present the most general expression of the Stress-Energy tensor in this spacetime to linear order in g L / c2, where L is a typical length scale of table-top experiments. Further, we analyze the Poynting vector, i.e., the intensity and its dependence on polarization, as well as the orientations and wavelengths of the interfering beams.
Keywords: Rindler Spacetime; Geometrical Optics Approximation; Polarization; Poynting Vector; Interference