2025/06/05 by F. Fillion-Gourdeau, Fillion-Gourdeau, F., Steve MacLean +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Optics (physics.optics) #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum and Classical Electrodynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.05534
openalex publication_date 2025/06/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Intense laser fields have been proposed as a means to generate light-induced gravitational effects, providing a novel approach to investigate gravity and its coupling to electromagnetism in a controlled laboratory setting. In this article, a detection scheme based on interferometry is introduced to assess the feasibility of observing such effects. Initially, the space-time deformation and the resulting induced phase difference are evaluated in homogeneous electric fields. Using the theoretical minimum phase sensitivity bound -- a known result in quantum information -- and accounting for background signal coming from photon-photon scattering -- a fundamental quantum electrodynamics effect related to vacuum properties -- a set of stringent requirements for detectability is obtained. Then, a more realistic scenario is considered where gravitational effects are generated by an e-dipole pulse. In all cases considered, it is demonstrated that observing these effects presents significant challenges, even with the capabilities of current and foreseen laser infrastructures.