Chirped-frequency excitation of gravitationally bound ultracold neutrons

被引：15

作者：

Manfredi, Giovanni ^{[1
,2
]}

Morandi, Omar ^{[1
,2
,3
]}

Friedland, Lazar ^{[4
]}

Jenke, Tobias ^{[5
,6
]}

Abele, Hartmut ^{[6
]}

机构：

[1] CNRS, Inst Phys & Chim Mat Strasbourg, BP 43, F-67034 Strasbourg, France

[2] Univ Strasbourg, BP 43, F-67034 Strasbourg, France

[3] Univ Firenze, Dipartimento Matemat & Informat U Dini, I-50139 Florence, Italy

[4] Hebrew Univ Jerusalem, Racah Inst Phys, IL-91904 Jerusalem, Israel

[5] Inst Laue Langevin, 71 Ave Martyrs, F-38000 Grenoble, France

[6] Tech Univ Wien, Atominst, Stn Allee 2, A-1020 Vienna, Austria

来源：

PHYSICAL REVIEW D | 2017年 / 95卷 / 02期

基金：

奥地利科学基金会; 以色列科学基金会;

关键词：

QUANTUM; GRAVITY; ANTIHYDROGEN; MASS;

D O I：

10.1103/PhysRevD.95.025016

中图分类号：

P1 [天文学];

学科分类号：

0704 ;

摘要：

Ultracold neutrons confined in the Earth's gravitational field display quantized energy levels that have been observed for over a decade. In recent resonance spectroscopy experiments [T. Jenke et al., Nat. Phys. 7, 468 (2011)], the transition between two such gravitational quantum states was driven by the mechanical oscillation of the plates that confine the neutrons. Here we show that by applying a sinusoidal modulation with slowly varying frequency (chirp), the neutrons can be brought to higher excited states by climbing the energy levels one by one. The proposed experiment should make it possible to observe the quantumclassical transition that occurs at high neutron energies. Furthermore, it provides a technique to realize superpositions of gravitational quantum states, to be used for precision tests of gravity at short distances.

引用

页数：6