2025/04/21 by Peter Asenbaum, Asenbaum, Peter, Chris Overstreet +1
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.15409
openalex publication_date 2025/04/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The calculation of the phase shift of a matter-wave interferometer looks different for different coordinate choices or the addition of a uniform gravitational field, but the final result of the observable phase shift does not depend on the coordinate choices or the uniform gravitational field. We find that the phase shift observed in ``Observation of the quantum equivalence principle for matter-waves'' is a magnetic recoil phase shift, similar to the recoil phase shift in light-pulse interferometers. Recoil phase shifts are inversely proportional to the inertial mass and do not depend on the gravitational mass. Our analysis highlights the difference between magnetic and gravitational acceleration in quantum mechanics.