Abstract
Spectroscopy is a method typically used to assess an unknown quantity of energy by means of a frequency measurement. In many problems, resonance techniques1,2 enable high-precision measurements, but the observables have generally been restricted to electromagnetic interactions. Here we report the application of resonance spectroscopy to gravity. In contrast to previous resonance methods, the quantum mechanical transition is driven by an oscillating field that does not directly couple an electromagnetic charge or moment to an electromagnetic field. Instead, we observe transitions between gravitational quantum states when the wave packet of an ultra-cold neutron couples to the modulation of a hard surface as the driving force. The experiments have the potential to test the equivalence principle3 and Newton’s gravity law at the micrometre scale4,5.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under Contract No. I529-N20 and the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Priority Programme (SPP) 1491 ‘Precision experiments in particle and astrophysics with cold and ultracold neutrons’, the DFG Excellence Initiative ‘Origin of the Universe’, and DFG support under Contract No. Ab128/2-1. The neutron mirrors were characterized by S-DH Sputterdünnschichttechnik, Heidelberg.
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Jenke, T., Geltenbort, P., Lemmel, H. et al. Realization of a gravity-resonance-spectroscopy technique. Nature Phys 7, 468–472 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1970
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1970
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