Interferometer response to geontropic fluctuations

Journal Article · Wed Jan 04 00:00:00 EST 2023 · Physical Review. D.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.107.024002· OSTI ID:2222925

Li, Dongjun ^[1]; Lee, Vincent S. H. ^[2]; Chen, Yanbei ^[2]; Zurek, Kathryn M. ^[2]

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1. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA (United States); California Institute of Technology
2. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA (United States)

We model vacuum fluctuations in quantum gravity with a scalar field, characterized by a high occupation number, coupled to the metric. The occupation number of the scalar is given by a thermal density matrix, whose form is motivated by fluctuations in the vacuum energy, which have been shown to be conformal near a light-sheet horizon. For the experimental measurement of interest in an interferometer, the size of the energy fluctuations is fixed by the area of a surface bounding the volume of spacetime being interrogated by an interferometer. We compute the interferometer response to these “geontropic” scalar-metric fluctuations, and apply our results to current and future interferometer measurements, such as LIGO and the proposed GQuEST experiment.

• Research Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0011632
• OSTI ID: 2222925
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D., Journal Name: Physical Review. D. Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 107; ISSN 2470-0010
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
Conformal field theory
Gravitational waves
Laboratory studies of gravity
Quantum gravity