Title
Gravitationally induced phase shift on a single photon
Author
Author
Denis Martynov
LIGO Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Abstract
The effect of the Earth's gravitational potential on a quantum wave function has only been observed for massive particles. In this paper we present a scheme to measure a gravitationally induced phase shift on a single photon traveling in a coherent superposition along different paths of an optical fiber interferometer. To create a measurable signal for the interaction between the static gravitational potential and the wave function of the photon, we propose a variant of a conventional Mach–Zehnder interferometer. We show that the predicted relative phase difference of 10−5 rad is measurable even in the presence of fiber noise, provided additional stabilization techniques are implemented for each arm of a large-scale fiber interferometer. Effects arising from the rotation of the Earth and the material properties of the fibers are analysed. We conclude that optical fiber interferometry is a feasible way to measure the gravitationally induced phase shift on a single-photon wave function, and thus provides a means to corroborate the equivalence of the energy of the photon and its effective gravitational mass.
Keywords
quantum measurementgravityoptical interferometryquantum optics
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:912151
Appeared in
Title
New Journal of Physics
Volume
19
Issue
3
From page
033028
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Date issued
2017
Access rights
Rights statement
© 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft

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