Related papers: Atom interferometers and a small-scale test of gen…
Intense laser fields have been proposed as a means to generate light-induced gravitational effects, providing a novel approach to investigate gravity and its coupling to electromagnetism in a controlled laboratory setting. In this article,…
Quantum mechanics and general relativity have been extensively and independently confirmed in many experiments. However, the interplay of the two theories has never been tested: all experiments that measured the influence of gravity on…
The computation of the phase shift in a symmetric atom interferometer in the presence of a gravitational field is reviewed. The difference of action-phase integrals between the two paths of the interferometer is zero for any Lagrangian…
Understanding physical phenomena at the intersection of quantum mechanics and general relativity remains a major challenge in modern physics. While various experimental approaches have been proposed to probe quantum systems in curved…
Atom interferometers provide a powerful means of realizing quantum coherent systems with increasingly macroscopic extent in space and time. These systems provide an opportunity for a variety of novel tests of fundamental physics, including…
A relativistic sub-picosecond model of gravitational time delay in radio astronomical observations is worked out and a new experimental test of general relativity is discussed in which the effect of retardation of gravity associated with…
Testing the effects predicted by the General Theory of Relativity, in its linearized weak field and slow motion approximation, in the Solar System is difficult because they are very small. Among them the post-Newtonian gravitomagnetic…
It is discussed how systems of quantum-correlated (entangled)particles or atoms behave in external gravitational fields and what gravitational effects may exist in such systems. An experimental setup is proposed which improves the…
Atom interferometers measure quantum interference patterns in the wave functions of cold atoms that follow superpositions of different space-time trajectories. These can be sensitive to phase shifts induced by fundamental physics processes…
Atom interferometry is a natural laboratory for precision tests of general relativity, but there is no simple relationship between atom interferometer phase and geometric properties of spacetime. Here we show that a different atom…
The Universality of Free Fall and the Weak Equivalence Principle, which are at the basis of General Relativity, have been confirmed to 1 part in 10^13. Space experiments with macroscopic test masses of different composition orbiting the…
In this work, quantum gravity effects, which can potentially be measured in magnetometers through the Larmor frequency of atoms in an external magnetic field, are estimated. It is shown that the thermal motion of atoms can, in principle,…
We propose an under-ground experiment to detect the general relativistic effects due to the curvature of space-time around the Earth (de Sitter effect) and to rotation of the planet (dragging of the inertial frames or Lense-Thirring…
Combining gravity with quantum mechanics remains one of the biggest challenges of physics. In the past years, experiments with opto-mechanical systems have been proposed that may give indirect clues about the quantum nature of gravity. In a…
In an ideal test of the equivalence principle, the test masses fall in a common inertial frame. A real experiment is affected by gravity gradients, which introduce systematic errors by coupling to initial kinematic differences between the…
The Stern-Gerlach effect, discovered a century ago, has become a paradigm of quantum mechanics. Surprisingly there has been little evidence that the original scheme with freely propagating atoms exposed to gradients from macroscopic magnets…
We discuss techniques for probing the effects of a constant force acting on cold atoms using two configurations of a grating echo-type atom interferometer. Laser-cooled samples of $^{85}$Rb with temperatures as low as 2.4 $\mu$K have been…
Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a clock at a higher gravitational potential will tick faster than an otherwise identical clock at a lower potential, an effect known as the gravitational redshift. Here we perform a…
An analytical expression for the gravitational field of a homogeneous cylinder is derived. The phase of the atom interferometer produced by the gravity field of the set of cylinders has been calculated. The optimal values of the initial…
We propose a quantum imaging-inspired setup for measuring gravitational fields using an atom that emits a photon at one of two possible locations. The atom acquires a gravitationally induced quantum phase that it shares with the photon. By…