Holger Mueller Abstract

Holger Mueller
UC Berkeley

Force-free gravitational redshift: a gravitostatic Aharonov-Bohm experiment.

ABSTRACT:

We propose a feasible laboratory interferometry experiment with matter waves in a gravitational potential caused by a pair of artificial field-generating masses. It will demonstrate that the presence of these masses (and, for moving atoms, time dilation) induces a phase shift, even if it does not caused any classical force. The phase shift is identical to that produced by the gravitational redshift (or time dilation) of clocks ticking at the atom's Compton frequency. In analogy to the Aharonov - Bohm effect in electromagnetism, the quantum mechanical phase is a function of the gravitational potential not the classical forces.