TY - JOUR
T1 - Breakdown of the equivalence between active gravitational mass and energy for a quantum body
AU - Lebed, Andrei G.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2016/9/5
Y1 - 2016/9/5
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84988697467&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84988697467&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1742-6596/738/1/012036
DO - 10.1088/1742-6596/738/1/012036
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:84988697467
SN - 1742-6588
VL - 738
JO - Journal of Physics: Conference Series
JF - Journal of Physics: Conference Series
IS - 1
M1 - 012036
T2 - 5th International Conference on Mathematical Modeling in Physical Sciences, IC-MSquare 2016
Y2 - 23 May 2016 through 26 May 2016
ER -