Apparent Correction to the Speed of Light in a Gravitational Potential
J. D. Franson
(Submitted on 28 Nov 2011 (v1), last revised 3 Apr 2014 (this version, v6))
The effects of physical interactions are usually incorporated into the quantum theory by including the corresponding terms in the Hamiltonian. Here we consider the effects of including the gravitational potential energy of massive particles in the Hamiltonian of quantum electrodynamics. This results in a predicted correction to the speed of light that is proportional to the fine structure constant. The correction to the speed of light obtained in this way depends on the gravitational potential and not the gravitational field, which is not gauge invariant and presumably nonphysical. Nevertheless, the predicted results are in reasonable agreement with experimental observations from Supernova 1987a.
Comments: 25 pages, 6 figures
Subjects: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Journal reference: New Journal of Physics 16, 065008 (2014)
Cite as: arXiv:1111.6986 [hep-ph]
(or arXiv:1111.6986v6 [hep-ph] for this version)
Submission history
From: James Franson [view email]
[v1] Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:40:42 GMT (387kb)
[v2] Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:26:11 GMT (387kb)
[v3] Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:10:22 GMT (391kb)
[v4] Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:51:56 GMT (390kb)
[v5] Mon, 23 Dec 2013 15:42:57 GMT (884kb)
[v6] Thu, 3 Apr 2014 17:31:55 GMT (941kb)
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