Quantum correction to classical gravitational interaction between two polarizable objects

Abstract

When gravity is quantized, there inevitably exist quantum gravitational vacuum fluctuations which induce quadrupole moments in gravitationally polarizable objects and produce a quantum correction to the classical Newtonian interaction between them. Here, based upon linearized quantum gravity and the leading-order perturbation theory, we study, from a quantum field-theoretic prospect, this quantum correction between a pair of gravitationally polarizable objects treated as two-level harmonic oscillators. We find that the interaction potential behaves like $r^{-11}$ in the retarded regime and $r^{-10}$ in the near regime. Our result agrees with what was recently obtained in different approaches. Our study seems to indicate that linearized quantum gravity is robust in dealing with quantum gravitational effects at low energies.

10 pages. Accepted for publication in PLB

References in corpus (1)

• Body-assisted van der Waals interaction between two atoms

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Analytical On-shell Calculation of Low Energy Higher Order Scattering
• Interaction between two gravitationally polarizable objects induced by thermal bath of gravitons
• Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom coupled with quantum fluctuations of spacetime
• Analytical On-shell Calculation of Higher Order Scattering: Massive Particles