The Frame-Dragging effect on the excitation rate of atoms
Abstract
The frame-dragging phenomenon in gravitational fields is revisited to explore the geometric effects induced by spacetime curvature. We quantize a massless scalar field in the spacetime of a rotating sphere, incorporating the frame-dragging frequency into the field modes. The excitation rate for an atom undergoing uniform circular motion and interacting with the scalar field is calculated. Our results reveal that the time-dependent excitation rates of atoms following different trajectories exhibit a common envelope, from which the frame-dragging frequency can be effectively extracted. This discovery leads us to propose a novel detection scheme for measuring the frame-dragging frequency caused by rotating celestial bodies, eliminating the need for traditional starlight calibration methods.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2408.13016,
title = {The Frame-Dragging effect on the excitation rate of atoms},
author = {Rui-Chen Liu and C. P. Sun},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.13016},
year = {2024}
}