Breakdown of the equivalence between active gravitational mass and energy for a quantum body

5th International Conference on Mathematical Modeling in Physical Sciences

物理学;数学

Lebed, Andrei G.^1,2

Department of Physics, University of Arizona, 1118 E. 4-th Street, Tucson

AZ, United States^1

L.D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, RAS, 2 Kosygina Street, Moscow

AZ, Russia^2

关键词: Direct observations;    Einstein equations;    Gravitational fields;    Gravitational mass;    Macroscopic effects;    Quantum superpositions;    Semiclassical approaches;    Time-dependent oscillations;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/738/1/012036/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/738/1/012036

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

We determine active gravitational mass operator of the simplest composite quantum body - a hydrogen atom - within the semiclassical approach to the Einstein equation for a gravitational field. We show that the expectation value of the mass is equivalent to energy for stationary quantum states. On the other hand, it occurs that, for quantum superpositions of stationary states with constant expectation values of energy, the expectation values of the gravitational mass exhibit time-dependent oscillations. This breaks the equivalence between active gravitational mass and energy and can be observed as a macroscopic effect for a macroscopic ensemble of coherent quantum states of the atoms. The corresponding experiment could be the first direct observation of quantum effects in General Relativity.