Gravitationally induced phase shift on a single photon

Abstract

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 travelling 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 $10^{-5}$ radians 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.

arXiv comment13 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
• Atom Interferometers
• Detecting Single Infrared Photons with 93% System Efficiency
• Quantum interferometric visibility as a witness of general relativistic proper time
• General Relativistic Effects in Atom Interferometry
• Fundamental quantum optics experiments conceivable with satellites -- reaching relativistic distances and velocities
• General relativistic effects in quantum interference of photons
• Direct generation of genuine single-longitudinal-mode narrowband photon pairs
• Observation of Fundamental Thermal Noise in Optical Fibers down to Infrasonic Frequencies
• Efficient single-spatial-mode periodically-poled KTiOPO_4 waveguide source for high-dimensional entanglement-based quantum key distribution
• A blueprint for a simultaneous test of quantum mechanics and general relativity in a space-based quantum optics experiment

Cited by in corpus (19)

• The Deep Space Quantum Link: Prospective Fundamental Physics Experiments using Long-Baseline Quantum Optics
• Limits and prospects for long-baseline optical fiber interferometry
• QUICK${}^3$ -- Design of a satellite-based quantum light source for quantum communication and extended physical theory tests in space
• Relativistic frame-dragging and the Hong-Ou-Mandel dip $-$ a primitive to gravitational effects in multi-photon quantum-interference
• Weakly gravitating isotropic waveguides
• On the Meaning of Local Symmetries: Epistemic-Ontological Dialectics
• Measuring space-time curvature using maximally path-entangled quantum states
• Polarization transport in optical fibers beyond Rytov's law
• Estimation of gravitational acceleration with quantum optical interferometers
• Gupta-Bleuler quantization of optical fibers in weak gravitational fields
• Fiber optics in curved space-times
• On the Influence of Earth's Rotation on Light Propagation in Waveguides
• Gravitational dephasing in spontaneous emission of atomic ensembles in timed Dicke states
• Effect of environment on the interferometry of clocks
• Newton's laws of motion generating gravity-mediated entanglement
• Zeptosecond-scale single-photon gyroscope
• Quantum interferometry in external gravitational fields
• Constraining the number of fundamental quantum degrees of freedom using gravity
• The Cauchy problem for the Proca equation in gravitating dielectric media