English

Inconstant Planck's constant

Quantum Physics 2015-12-16 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

Motivated by the Dirac idea that fundamental constant are dynamical variables and by conjectures on quantum structure of spacetime at small distances, we consider the possibility that Planck constant \hbar is a time depending quantity, undergoing random gaussian fluctuations around its measured constant mean value, with variance σ2\sigma^2 and a typical correlation timescale Δt\Delta t. We consider the case of propagation of a free particle and a one--dimensional harmonic oscillator coherent state, and show that the time evolution in both cases is different from the standard behaviour. Finally, we discuss how interferometric experiments or exploiting coherent electromagnetic fields in a cavity may put effective bounds on the value of τ=σ2Δt\tau= \sigma^2 \Delta t.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1509.02107,
  title  = {Inconstant Planck's constant},
  author = {Gianpiero Mangano and Fedele Lizzi and Alberto Porzio},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.02107},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

To appear on the International Journal of Modern Physics A

R2 v1 2026-06-22T10:50:57.230Z