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Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields

Reply to “Comment on ‘Measurement of quantum states of neutrons in the Earth’s gravitational field’ ”

Валерий Викторович Несвижевский, A. Petoukhov, H. G. Börner, Konstantin V. Protasov, Alexei Yu. Voronin, Alexander Westphal, S. Baeßler, H. Abele, Alexei M. Gagarski

Published Nov 18, 2003• 23 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Possible false effects in the experiment on the measurement of quantum states of neutrons in the Earth's gravitational field are discussed. It is shown that the measured quantum states are defined mainly by a mirror and the gravitational field.
DOI
10.1103/physrevd.68.108702

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In the paper by Nesvizhevsky et al. [Phys. Rev. D 67, 102002 (2003)], it is argued that the lowest quantum state of neutrons in the Earth's gravitational field has been experimentally identified. While this is most likely correct, it is imperative to investigate all alternative explanations of the result in order to close all loopholes, as it is the first experiment ever claimed to have observed gravitational quantum states. Here we show that geometrical effects in the experimental setup can mimic the results attributed to gravity. Modifications of the experimental setup to close these possible loopholes are suggested.
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We studied the neutron quantum states in the potential well formed by the Earth's gravitational field and a horizontal mirror. The estimated characteristic sizes of the neutron wave functions in two lowest quantum states correspond to their expectations with an accuracy of ≈25 %. The spatial density distribution in a standing neutron wave above a mirror was measured for a set of a few lowest quantum states. A position-sensitive neutron detector with an extra high spatial resolution of 1 μm to 2 μm was developed and tested for this particular task. Although this experiment was not designed or optimized to search for an additional short-range force, nevertheless it allowed us to slightly improve the published boundary in the nanometer range of characteristic distances. We studied systematical uncertainties in the chosen "flow-through" method as well as the feasibility to improve further the accuracy in this experiment.
The experiment performed with ultra-cold neutrons at the Laue-Langevin Institute, Grenoble, is analyzed in view of the claim that ``neutron quantum states in Earth gravitational field'' are observed. Our conclusion is that the above claim is neither theoretically nor experimentally substantiated. We also criticize the statement that ``observation of the gravitationally bound quantum states of neutrons and the related experimental techniques provide a unique tool for a broad range of investigations in fundamental physics of particles and fields''.