Gravitational perturbation of the hydrogen spectrum
The most viable theories of gravitation are metric theories. In these theories the gravitation is manifested as a curvature of space-time and it is characterized by the Riemann tensor. It is of great interest to measure, or to put an upper bound on, the Riemann tensor. The energy shifts caused by the gravitational interaction on the hydrogen spectrum provide a way of carrying out such measurements. The research reported in this thesis consists of the calculation of the energy shift, using perturbation theory, of the hydrogen atom in different situations of astro-physical interest. The perturbation of the energy levels of a freely falling one-electron atom in an arbitrary curved space-time are considered. The shifts of the energy levels are calculated to first order in the Riemann tensor for the relativistic 2P/sub 3///sub 2/ levels and for the nonrelativistic 3S, 3P, and 3D levels. These and earlier results are evaluated explicitly for atoms in radial orbits in the Schwarzschild and parametrized post-Newtonian metrics and also for atoms in circular orbits of the Schwarzschild metric. Another investigation reported in this thesis is the use of hydrogen atoms as remote quantum detectors of gravitational waves. The shifts induced by gravitational waves on low lying and highly excited atoms are studied. For the highly excited atoms semiclassical perturbation theory is used. Numerical results are given for several sources including: binary stars, binary neutron stars, collapsing stars, and pulsars. The shifts in a rigid rotator are also considered.
- Research Organization:
- Wisconsin Univ., Milwaukee (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 5094137
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
GENERAL PHYSICS
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
DETECTION
RIEMANN SPACE
HYDROGEN
ATOMS
BINARY STARS
ENERGY LEVELS
GRAVITATION
NEUTRON STARS
ORBITS
P STATES
PERTURBATION THEORY
PULSARS
S STATES
SCHWARZSCHILD METRIC
SPACE-TIME
SPECTRA
THEORETICAL DATA
COSMIC RADIO SOURCES
DATA
ELEMENTS
INFORMATION
MATHEMATICAL SPACE
METRICS
NONMETALS
NUMERICAL DATA
SPACE
STARS
640106* - Astrophysics & Cosmology- Cosmology