English

Observational Signatures of Quantum Gravity in Interferometers

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2021-10-22 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We consider the uncertainty in the arm length of an interferometer due to metric fluctuations from the quantum nature of gravity, proposing a concrete microscopic model of energy fluctuations in holographic degrees of freedom on the surface bounding a causally connected region of spacetime. In our model, fluctuations longitudinal to the beam direction accumulate in the infrared and feature strong long distance correlation in the transverse direction. This leads to a signal that could be observed in a gravitational wave interferometer. We connect the positional uncertainty principle arising from our calculations to the 't Hooft gravitational S-matrix.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1902.08207,
  title  = {Observational Signatures of Quantum Gravity in Interferometers},
  author = {Erik P. Verlinde and Kathryn M. Zurek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.08207},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

6 pages, 1 figure. v2: Updated to reflect published version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:47:31.765Z