Related papers: Fizeau's "aether-drag" experiment in the undergrad…
As one of the most influential experiments on the development of modern macroscopic theory from Newtonian mechanics to Einstein's special theory of relativity, the phenomenon of light dragging in a moving medium has been discussed and…
The Fresnel-Fizeau effect of transverse drag, in which the trajectory of a light beam changes due to transverse motion of the optical medium, is usually extremely small and hard to detect. We observe transverse drag in a moving hot-vapor…
A moving dielectric medium can displace the optical path of light passing through it, a phenomenon known as the Fresnel-Fizeau optical drag effect. The resulting displacement is proportional to the medium's velocity. In this article, we…
Fizeau experiment, inspiring Einstein's special theory of relativity, reveals a small dragging effect of light inside a moving medium. Dispersion can enhance such light drag according to Lorentz's predication. Here we experimentally…
On the occasion of the laser's 50th anniversary, we performed a modern Fizeau experiment, measuring the speed of light with a laser beam passing over the city centre of Marseille. For a round trip distance of almost five kilometers, the…
Atom interferometry is now reaching sufficient precision to motivate laboratory tests of general relativity. We begin by explaining the non-relativistic calculation of the phase shift in an atom interferometer and deriving its range of…
Motivated by the critical remarks of several authors, we have re-analyzed the classical ether-drift experiments with the conclusion that the small observed deviations should not be neglected. In fact, within the framework of Lorentzian…
A light beam normally incident upon an uniformly moving dielectric medium is in general subject to bendings due to a transverse Fresnel-Fizeau light drag effect. In conventional dielectrics, the magnitude of this bending effect is very…
Modern ether-drift experiments look for a preferred frame by measuring the difference \Delta \nu in the relative frequencies of two cavity-stabilized lasers, upon local rotations of the apparatus or under the Earth's rotation. If the small…
An experiment to test for relativistic frame dragging effects with quantum interferometry is proposed. The idea that the classical trajectories of the interferometer surround a spherical mass source whose angular momentum is perpendicular…
A novel chiral interferometer is proposed that allows for a direct measurement of the phase of the transmission coefficient for transport through a variety of mesoscopic structures in a strong magnetic field. The effects of…
Since the first appearance of general relativity in 1916, various experiments have been conducted to test the theory. Due to the weakness of the interactions involved, all of the documented tests were carried out in a gravitational field…
95 years before Special Relativity was born, Arago attempted to detect the absolute motion of the Earth by measuring the deflection of starlight passing through a prism fixed to the Earth. The null result of this experiment gave rise to the…
An experiment that confirms the Fresnel drag formalism in RF coaxial cables is reported. The Fresnel `drag' in bulk dielectrics and in optical fibers has previously been well established. An explanation for this formalism is given, and it…
We present a new derivation of the Fresnel-Fizeau formula for the drag of light by a moving medium using a simple perturbation approach. We focus particulary on the physical origin of the phenomenon and we show that it is very similar to…
This article presents a detailed analysis of an undergraduate physics laboratory experiment designed to determine the density of water using fundamental measurement techniques and data analysis methods. The experimental setup consists of a…
A recent laser interferometry experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 88, 10401 (2002)] registered a non-detection of a frequency shift that amounts to a fractional change in the speed of light $\delta c/c \approx (4.8\pm5.3)\times10^{-12}$. We…
The Fresnel-Fizeau effect is a special relativistic effect that makes the speed of light dependent on the velocity of a transparent, moving medium. We present a theoretical formalism for discussing propagation of electromagnetic signals…
A simple method for presenting a dynamic transition between Fresnel and Fraunhofer diffraction zones is considered. Experiments are conducted on different apertures and diffraction patterns are photographed at various distances between the…
We propose a method to measure the energy dependence of the neutron optical potential $dV_{opt}/dE$ in the slow neutron energy regime. Our method makes essential use of a special property of the phase shift for a nonrelativistic neutron in…