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arXiv:1811.01522 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Nonclassical effects in geodesic motion

Minnan Zhang, Y. Wang

Published Jan 6, 2020• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Gravity gradient is known as a serious systematic effect in atomic tests of the universality of free fall, where the initial central position and velocity of atoms need to be exactly controlled. In this paper, we study quantum free fall with high-order gravity gradients. It is shown that the cubic terms in the Newtonian potential shall generate a new phase shift in atom interferometers, which depends on the position and velocity uncertainties of the incident atoms. We further investigate the nonclassicality of free fall and show that, due to the cubic potential, the gravitational Wigner equation in phase space of position and velocity is different from the classical Liouville equation. There exists a mass-dependent correction in the dynamical equation regardless of initial state. Nevertheless, this is just a quantum mechanical effect of microparticles, which does not violate equivalence principle that inertia mass is equal to the gravitational mass.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.101.026005

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Gravity gradient is known as a serious systematic effect in atomic tests of the universality of free fall, where the initial central position and velocity of atoms need to be exactly controlled. In this paper, we study quantum free fall with high-order gravity gradients. It is shown that the cubic terms in the Newtonian potential shall generate a new phase shift in atom interferometers, which depends on the position and velocity uncertainties of the incident atoms. We further investigate the nonclassicality of free fall and show that, due to the cubic potential, the gravitational Wigner equation in phase space of position and velocity is different from the classical Liouville equation. There exists a mass-dependent correction in the dynamical equation regardless of initial state. Nevertheless, this is just a quantum mechanical effect of microparticles, which does not violate equivalence principle that inertia mass is equal to the gravitational mass.
Gravity gradients represent a major obstacle in high-precision measurements by atom interferometry. Controlling their effects to the required stability and accuracy imposes very stringent requirements on the relative positioning of freely falling atomic clouds, as in the case of precise tests of Einstein's equivalence principle. We demonstrate a new method to exactly compensate the effects introduced by gravity gradients in a Raman-pulse atom interferometer. By shifting the frequency of the Raman lasers during the central π pulse, it is possible to cancel the initial position- and velocity-dependent phase shift produced by gravity gradients. We apply this technique to simultaneous interferometers positioned along the vertical direction and demonstrate a new method for measuring local gravity gradients that does not require precise knowledge of the relative position between the atomic clouds. Based on this method, we also propose an improved scheme to determine the Newtonian gravitational constant G towards the 10 ppm relative uncertainty.
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 which is at most quadratic in position and velocity. We emphasize that in a large class of theories of gravity the atom interferometer permits a test of the weak version of the equivalence principle (or universality of free fall) by comparing the acceleration of atoms with that of ordinary bodies, but is insensitive to that aspect of the equivalence principle known as the gravitational redshift or universality of clock rates.
Atom interferometry tests of universality of free fall based on the differential measurement of two different atomic species provide a useful complement to those based on macroscopic masses. However, when striving for the highest possible sensitivities, gravity gradients pose a serious challenge. Indeed, the relative initial position and velocity for the two species need to be controlled with extremely high accuracy, which can be rather demanding in practice and whose verification may require rather long integration times. Furthermore, in highly sensitive configurations gravity gradients lead to a drastic loss of contrast. These difficulties can be mitigated by employing wave packets with narrower position and momentum widths, but this is ultimately limited by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. We present a promising scheme that overcomes these problems by compensating the effects of the gravity gradients and circumvents the fundamental limitations due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Furthermore, it relaxes the experimental requirements on initial colocation by several orders of magnitude.
Abstract We construct a quasi-inertial reference system for the atom interferometer in terms of the light-field compensation, which is equivalent to the establishment of a quantum drag-free system. The compensation considered in our approach involves feedbacks of both classical and quantum nature. As a result, it may significantly reduce the dependence of the interferometric phase shift on the atomic initial position and velocity. As the error bound for gravity experiments originates primarily from the uncertainties in the initial conditions, the proposed quasi-inertial reference system might lead to substantial improvement in this regard. To be specific, the refined process introduced in the present study gives rise to the possibility of the measurement of the Newtonian gravitational constant G beyond the precision level of 10 −6 , as well as the test of the weak equivalence principle beyond 10 −14 . Moreover, when compared with the conventional quasi-inertial reference based on macroscopic objects, additional quantum feedback plays an essential role concerning both theoretical rigor and practical performance enhancement. We further explore the possibility of implementing the proposed quasi-inertial reference system in ongoing experimental developments.
Abstract We ask the question of how the (weak) equivalence principle established in classical gravitational physics should be reformulated and interpreted for massive quantum objects that may also have internal degrees of freedom (dof). This inquiry is necessary because even elementary concepts like a classical trajectory are not well defined in quantum physics—trajectories originating from quantum histories become viable entities only under stringent decoherence conditions. From this investigation we posit two logically and operationally distinct statements of the equivalence principle for quantum systems. Version A: the probability distribution of position for a free-falling particle is the same as the probability distribution of a free particle, modulo a mass-independent shift of its mean. Version B: any two particles with the same velocity wave-function behave identically in free fall, irrespective of their masses. Both statements apply to all quantum states, including those without a classical correspondence, and also for composite particles with quantum internal dof. We also investigate the consequences of the interaction between internal and external dof induced by free fall. For a class of initial states, we find dephasing occurs for the translational dof, namely, the suppression of the off-diagonal terms of the density matrix, in the position basis. We also find a gravitational phase shift in the reduced density matrix of the internal dof that does not depend on the particle’s mass. For classical states, the phase shift has a natural classical interpretation in terms of gravitational red-shift and special relativistic time-dilation.
Long-time atom interferometry is instrumental to various high-precision measurements of fundamental physical properties, including tests of the equivalence principle.Due to rotations and gravity gradients, the classical trajectories characterizing the motion of the wave packets for the two branches of the interferometer do not close in phase space, an effect which increases significantly with the interferometer time.The relative displacement between the interfering wave packets in such open interferometers leads to a fringe pattern in the density profile at each exit port and a loss of contrast in the oscillations of the integrated particle number as a function of the phase shift.Paying particular attention to gravity gradients, we present a simple mitigation strategy involving small changes in the timing of the laser pulses which is very easy to implement.A useful representation-free description of the state evolution in an atom interferometer is introduced and employed to analyze the loss of contrast and mitigation strategy in the general case.(As a by-product, a remarkably compact derivation of the phaseshift in a general light-pulse atom interferometer is provided.)Furthermore, exact results are obtained for (pure and mixed) Gaussian states which allow a simple interpretation in terms of the alignment of Wigner functions in phase-space.Analytical results are also obtained for expanding Bose-Einstein condensates within the time-dependent Thomas-Fermi approximation.Finally, a combined strategy for rotations and nonaligned gravity gradients is considered as well.