Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
2010-02-16
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
4 pages; 1 figure inserted; clarifications made
Scientific paper
We investigate the oscillation of the center of mass of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates coupled to the zero-point fluctuations of the gravitational field. A semiclassical analysis is performed that allows to calculate the mean square amplitude of the oscillation. In analogy with the Lamb shift in quantum electrodynamics, this gives rise to an upshift of the energy of the trapped condensates. We show that for an elongated trap, the energy shift scales quadratically with the length as well as cubically with the total number of atoms, leading to an energy increase of 1 % using a 5 cm long trap with 10^8 rubidium atoms. This could potentially lead to the first observable effect of low energy quantum gravity and provide a stringent test for any viable theory of quantum gravity.
Bingham Robert
Mendonca Tito J.
Wang Charles H. -T.
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