Graviton-Photon Oscillations as a Probe of Quantum Gravity
arXiv:2405.01407 · doi:10.1088/1361-6382/ad7fc5
Abstract
The Gertsenshtein effect could in principle be used to detect a single graviton by firing it through a region filled with a constant magnetic field that enables its conversion to a photon, which can be efficiently detected via standard techniques. The quantization of the gravitational field could then be inferred indirectly. We show that for currently available single-photon detector technology, the Gertsenshtein detector is generically inefficient, meaning that the probability of detection is . The Gertsenshtein detector can become efficient on astrophysical scales for futuristic single-photon detectors sensitive to frequencies in the Hz to kHz range. It is not clear whether such devices are in principle possible.
v3: 26 pages, 1 figure. Added section 3, where I explicitly derive the mixing matrix between graviton-photon quantum states, and appendix 1, where I discuss some technical issues related to the one-loop effective action. Version accepted for publication in Class. Quantum Gravity
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