English

Quantum correction to classical gravitational interaction between two polarizable objects

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2016-11-04 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

When gravity is quantized, there inevitably exist quantum gravitational vacuum fluctuations which induce quadrupole moments in gravitationally polarizable objects and produce a quantum correction to the classical Newtonian interaction between them. Here, based upon linearized quantum gravity and the leading-order perturbation theory, we study, from a quantum field-theoretic prospect, this quantum correction between a pair of gravitationally polarizable objects treated as two-level harmonic oscillators. We find that the interaction potential behaves like r11r^{-11} in the retarded regime and r10r^{-10} in the near regime. Our result agrees with what was recently obtained in different approaches. Our study seems to indicate that linearized quantum gravity is robust in dealing with quantum gravitational effects at low energies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.04929,
  title  = {Quantum correction to classical gravitational interaction between two polarizable objects},
  author = {Puxun Wu and Jiawei Hu and Hongwei Yu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.04929},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

10 pages. Accepted for publication in PLB

R2 v1 2026-06-22T14:56:50.701Z