Gravitationally induced phase shift on a single photon
The effect of the Earth's gravitational potential on a quantum wave function has only been observed for massive particles. In this paper we present a scheme to measure a gravitationally induced phase shift on a single photon traveling in a coherent superposition along different paths of an opti...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
IOP Publishing
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110023 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0219-9706 |
| Summary: | The effect of the Earth's gravitational potential on a quantum wave function has only been observed for massive particles. In this paper we present a scheme to measure a gravitationally induced phase shift on a single photon traveling in a coherent superposition along different paths of an optical fiber interferometer. To create a measurable signal for the interaction between the static gravitational potential and the wave function of the photon, we propose a variant of a conventional Mach–Zehnder interferometer. We show that the predicted relative phase difference of 10⁻⁵ rad is measurable even in the presence of fiber noise, provided additional stabilization techniques are implemented for each arm of a large-scale fiber interferometer. Effects arising from the rotation of the Earth and the material properties of the fibers are analysed. We conclude that optical fiber interferometry is a feasible way to measure the gravitationally induced phase shift on a single-photon wave function, and thus provides a means to corroborate the equivalence of the energy of the photon and its effective gravitational mass. |
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