Friday, February 21, 2020

Gravitational Stark effect for Ridberg atom in centrifuge

The possible way for direct observation of the quantum gravitational effects on Earth would be use of principle of equivalence and use of fast rotating centrifuges already available to create the equivalent of strong enough gravitational field.
Back in 1950 Popular mechanics magazine mentioned two commercially available record-setting centrifuges: The Sharples Corporation of Philadelphia manufactured centrifuge with 1.2 millions rotations per minute and Dr Jesse Wakefield Beams, University of Virginia reported about 166000 rotations per second.
The easiest way to observe gravitational Stark effect is to rely upon the gravitational field gradient instead of the gravitational field itself (because due to the equivalence principle both electron and nucleus will be attracted with the same force). The field gradient, however, will create the energy difference for the atom to be observed as line shift. The gradient of the gravitational field in the centrifuge is:
F=m*w*w*r
dF/dr=m*w*w
Here r is the distance from the center of the rotation, m is the mass of the object, w is the rotational angular frequency.
From the simple formula for energy in the gradient of the gravitational field:

ΔE=ΔF*ao
Here ΔE is the energy difference due to the different gravity for the electron as it rotates around the nucleus - gravitational force is different throughout the atom, ao is the radius of the atom (the radius of Bohr orbit)

ΔF=(dF/dr)*ao

and
ΔE=me*w2*ao2=me*(2*π*ν)2*ao2

here me is the mass of electron,  ν is the rotational frequency expressed in Hz , ao is the radius of the Ridberg atom (around 1 micrometer possible now). Substituting 166000 Hz as the record rotational frequency we have:


ΔE=2*10exp(-30) Joule or 1.24*10exp(-11) eV or in frequency domain the splitting would be 3021 Hz.
Such splitting between lines is possible to record. Assuming the centrifuges improved in the last 70 years the overall experiment seems feasible.

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