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# Thermal compression of two-dimensional atomic hydrogen to quantum degeneracy

## Abstract

We describe experiments where 2D atomic hydrogen gas is compressed thermally at a small ”cold spot” on the surface of superfluid helium and detected directly with electron-spin resonance. We reach surface densities up to $`5\times 10^{12}`$ cm-2 at temperatures $`100`$ mK corresponding to the maximum 2D phase-space density $`1.5`$. By independent measurements of the surface density and its decay rate we make the first direct determination of the three-body recombination rate constant and get the upper bound $`L_{3b}2\times 10^{25}`$ cm4/s which is an order of magnitude smaller than previously reported experimental results.

When adsorbed on the surface of superfluid helium spin-polarized atomic hydrogen (H$``$) is an ideal realization of a two-dimensional (2D) boson gas Walraven (1992). Helium provides a translationally invariant substrate and its surface-normal potential supports only one bound state for hydrogen with the binding energy $`E_a`$=1.14(1) K Safonov et al. (2001). Even for such a weak interaction, lowering the surface temperature $`T_s`$ well below 1 K leads to a large adsorbate density $`\sigma `$. At high H$``$ coverages three-body recombination is expected to be the dominant density decay mechanism setting the main obstacle to the achievement of the quantum degeneracy regime, where the thermal de Broglie wavelength $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is larger than the average interatomic spacing. Degenerate 2D H$``$ is expected to exhibit collective phenomena such as the Kosterlitz-Thouless superfluidity transition and the formation of a quasicondensate.

Two methods of local compression of adsorbed H$``$ have been employed to overcome limitations caused by recombination and its heat. Magnetic compression has been successfully used to achieve quantum degeneracy Safonov et al. (1998); Mosk et al. (1998). In this method the recombination heat is removed from the compressed H$``$ by ripplons of the helium surface and the cooling efficiency depends on the length of the heat transfer path. By decreasing the size of the compressed region to 20 $`\mu `$m we were able to achieve $`\sigma \mathrm{\Lambda }^29`$ Safonov et al. (1998). However, the small size of the sample together with large magnetic field gradients did not allow to implement direct diagnostics of adsorbed H$``$. In the thermal compression method Svistunov et al. (1991); Matsubara et al. (1994) cooling a small part of the sample cell wall well below the temperature of the rest of the wall leads to an exponential increase of $`\sigma `$ on such a ”cold spot”. In this method the recombination heat is transferred from the ripplons to the phonons of helium Reynolds et al. (1992) and then to the substrate beneath the spot. Therefore a larger spot is preferable as long as the total recombination rate on the spot becomes a limitation. The larger sample size and the homogeneity of the magnetic field make thermal compression better suited for direct studies of adsorbed H$``$.

In the present work we use sensitive electron-spin resonance Vasilyev et al. (2002) to diagnose 2D H$``$ gas thermally compressed to $`\sigma \mathrm{\Lambda }^21.5`$ and discuss the limitations and possible improvements of the ”cold spot” method to reach and detect the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. By independent measurements of the recombination rate and the surface density we obtain the first directly determined value, actually an upper bound, of the three-body surface recombination rate constant $`L_{3b}2\times 10^{25}`$ cm4/sec. This is 4…10 times smaller than the earlier values measured indirectly Safonov et al. (1998); Bell et al. (1986); Reynolds et al. (1985); Sprik et al. (1986).

Our experimental setup is shown in Fig.1. The sample cell has been described elsewhere Vasilyev et al. (2002). The low-temperature part of the ESR spectrometer, operating now as a mm-wave bridge, has been modified so that we may use three times smaller excitation powers and thus avoid ESR instability effects Vasilyev et al. (2002) in a wider temperatures range. Gradient coils were built to reduce the field inhomogeneity of the main magnet so that the width of the bulk line is decreased to $`0.1`$ G. It has been found that even very small ($`1`$ ppb) 3He impurity in our isotopically purified 4He condensed into the cell may significantly influence the adsorption of the 2D hydrogen Safonov et al. (2001). Therefore we built an in situ helium film purifier, a reservoir with the large surface area of $`2\times 10^3`$ cm2 located in zero field (Fig.1). Being cooled down to the lowest temperatures attained here the purifier adsorbs the reminder of 3He atoms from the cell. The miniature RuO2 thermometers used to measure the temperatures of the cell, the buffer volume and the 3He/4He coolant of the cold spot were calibrated to an accuracy better than 1 mK with a 3He melting curve thermometer.

In a typical experiment we fill the cell and the buffer with atomic hydrogen from a low-temperature dissociator to a density $`n10^{15}`$ cm-3. After switching off the discharge we stabilize the buffer to $`T_b=350`$ mK, the optimum temperature for getting the longest lifetime for the hydrogen sample, and cool the cell to a desired temperature $`T_c`$=60…170 mK. The temperatures of the mixing chamber of the dilution refrigerator and the 3He-4He stream cooling the cold spot (cp. Fig.1) are stabilized in the range $`T_L`$=30…150 mK. Thermal compression can be rapidly ($`<`$ 5 s) turned on and off by changing the coolant temperature. Decays of our H$``$ samples were governed by impurity relaxation from ”pure” hyperfine state $`b`$ to more reactive state $`a`$ Silvera and Walraven (1986). To decrease the relaxation rate the cell is made of nonmagnetic materials (ultrapure copper, epoxy, Kapton foils) and its walls are coated at low temperatures with a 10…50 nm thick solid H2 layer by running the dissociator for several days. The 0.2 cm diameter tube connecting the buffer and the cell is wide enough to render the exchange of atoms between the two volumes faster than the decay rates. This ensures a dynamic density equilibrium between the volumes. Decays of H$``$ samples were monitored at fixed temperatures of the cell region. Recombination rates in the buffer and cell are measured calorimetrically from the feedback powers of the respective temperature controllers. We find that at the present temperatures the loss rate of atoms in the buffer is negligible compared to that in the cell. Integrating the latter we extract the bulk densities as functions of time in both volumes.

The evolution of the ESR spectrum during the decay of a H$``$ sample is shown in Fig. 2. The resonance line originating from the adsorbed atoms is shifted from the bulk line due to the non-zero average dipolar field in this 2D system Vasilyev et al. (2002); Shinkoda and Hardy (1991). To find the surface density we integrate the surface and bulk absorption ESR lines. The bulk integral is calibrated calorimetrically against the absolute value of the bulk density, which method does not rely on the adsorption isotherm and yields the absolute value of surface density with an accuracy of $`10\%`$. With this method we checked the relation between the internal dipolar field and the surface density and found $`\mathrm{\Delta }H_d=A\sigma `$, where $`A=1.05(10)\times 10^{12}`$ G cm2. This direct and more accurate measurement agrees well with the previous experimental and calculated results Vasilyev et al. (2002); Shinkoda and Hardy (1991).

The ESR lineshape of adsorbed atoms $`S(h)`$ as a function of magnetic field sweep $`h`$ is broadened due to the inhomogeneity of the temperature $`T_s(r)`$ and, consequently, density $`\sigma (r)`$ of the 2D gas in the spot region. It is given by the relation

$$S(h)H_1^2(r)f_i(hA\sigma (r))\sigma (r)r𝑑r,$$
(1)
where $`H_1^2(r)`$ is the microwave field profile on the flat mirror. The intrinsic lineshape $`f_i(h)`$ of the adsorbed atoms is very narrow Vasilyev et al. (2002) and can be replaced by a delta function. We used Eq. (1) to extract density profiles $`\sigma (r)`$ from the observed lineshapes using a numerical fitting routine. Examples of the surface density profiles recovered for a few ESR spectra is presented in Fig. 2b. Even for the largest temperature difference between the cell and spot the surface density is homogeneous within $`10\%`$ on the cold spot. The relatively slow decrease of $`\sigma `$ outside the spot ($`r>0.75`$ cm) gives rise to a broad maximum between the bulk and main surface signals.

Numerous decays have been measured at various cell and spot temperatures. Plots of the maximum surface density as a function of the bulk density $`n`$ for a fixed $`T_c`$=154 mK and various coolant temperatures $`T_L`$ are presented in Fig. 3a.

For low bulk densities the surface density increases linearly with $`n`$, as it should do according to the adsorption isotherm Svistunov et al. (1991); Mosk (1999). Effective temperature of the 2D gas $`T_s`$ (Fig. 3b) is extracted from the $`\sigma `$ and $`n`$ values using the adsorption isotherm and taking $`E_a`$=1.14(1) K Safonov et al. (2001). At high temperatures $`T_L100`$ mK and small differences $`T_LT_c10`$ mK, $`T_s`$ turns out be equal to $`T_L`$ within 1 mK, the error bar of our thermometry. This coincidence is regarded as a confirmation of the above mentioned adsorption energy value.

The observed levelling of $`\sigma `$ with increasing $`n`$ (upper plots in Fig. 3) points to an overheating of the 2D H$``$ gas which begins the earlier the lower is the coolant temperature. The surface temperatures $`T_s`$ extracted from the low-density parts of the curves start to exceed the coolant temperature, the difference increasing with increasing $`T_cT_L`$. This may be explained by heating of the spot by a heat flux from the much warmer cell walls. Another possible reason for the saturation of the surface density could be a 2D hydrodynamic flow of H$``$ on the spot out of the high density region. If the flow becomes fast enough, the balance between the adsorption and desorption rates will be disturbed. Interaction of H$``$ with surface quasiparticles like ripplons and 3He impurities should impede the flow. To distinguish between the roles of the overheating and the 2D flow we added 3He into the cell varying the 3He surface density up to $`10^{14}`$ cm-2. This did not help to get any higher density for the adsorbed H$``$. On the other hand, the maximum $`\sigma `$ appeared to be very sensitive to the rate of one-body impurity relaxation in the cell and buffer. Therefore we conclude that the recombination overheating is more important than the 2D flow and limits the highest achieved densities. The $`T_s`$ values extracted from the adsorption isotherm (Fig. 3) can be considered as good upper limits to the real surface temperatures.

In our experiments the decay of H$``$ is determined mainly by one-body relaxation and three-body recombination on the cell walls. Due to the density profile over the spot at high $`\sigma `$ being nearly step-like (Fig. 2) we can separate the spot contribution and write for the total recombination rate

$$\frac{dN}{dt}=(2G_1\sigma +L_{3b}\sigma ^3)A_{cs}R(n,T_c,T_b),$$
(2)
where $`G_1`$ is the one-body relaxation rate constant, $`L_{3b}`$ the three-body recombination rate constant, $`A_{cs}`$ the cold spot surface area and $`R(n,T_c,T_b)`$ is the atom loss rate in the rest of the cell and the buffer. We tried to extract the spot contribution by monitoring recombination powers during decays at different coolant temperatures and keeping conditions in the rest of the cell region unchanged. No difference was found within the noise of the temperature controller signal indicating that the spot contribution is very small compared to that of the rest of the walls. Therefore, to get a higher resolution, we used the possibility to turn the spot cooling rapidly on (or off) during the decay (Fig. 4) and performed such experiments at various cell temperatures and bulk densities.

Even for the largest change in the surface density of the spot the corresponding change of the total recombination power in the cell was hardly discernible from the noise. Assuming that three-body recombination is the dominant loss mechanism on the spot and integrating the three-body rate over the actual density profile of the spot we extract the upper limit $`L_{3b}2\times 10^{25}`$ cm4/s. This is the first directly measured value based on independent determinations of the recombination rate and surface density. It agrees well with the calculations of de Goey et al. de Goey et al. (1984), but is an order of magnitude lower than the $`L_{3b}`$ values reported in several previous works Bell et al. (1986); Reynolds et al. (1985); Sprik et al. (1986).

In all previous measurements of surface recombination $`\sigma `$ was inferred into the rate equations through the adsorption isotherm. Instead of Eq. (2) a rate equation for the bulk density

$$\frac{dn}{dt}=G_1^enL_{3b}^en^3,$$
(3)
was used. Here $`G_1^e=G_1(A/V)\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{exp}(E_a/T_S)`$ and $`L_{3b}^e=L_{3b}(A/V)\mathrm{\Lambda }^3\mathrm{exp}(3E_a/T_S)`$ are effective rate constants with $`A/V`$ being the area-to-volume ratio of the cell. The effective constants were extracted from the fits of the measured $`n(t)`$ curves and the adsorption energy and the intrinsic constants $`G_1`$ and $`L_{3b}`$ were obtained from the Arrhenius plots of the effective constants. There are however two fundamental drawbacks in this approach. First, $`E_a`$ and the intrinsic rate constants are correlated parameters, and even a small uncertainty in $`E_a`$ can seriously affect the accuracy of the intrinsic constants. A 3He content as small as 0.1 ppm can be a reason for some of the published values of $`E_a`$ being $`10\%`$ lower than the latest value $`E_a`$ = 1.14(1) K obtained for isotopically purified 4He Safonov et al. (2001) and confirmed also in this work. At $`T_s100`$ mK this error decreases the factor $`\mathrm{exp}(3E_a/T_s)`$ and increases $`L_{3b}`$ by an order of magnitude. Another problem arises from the uncertainty of $`T_s`$ due to the recombination heating of the 2D gas. This makes the surface temperature a function of time in the decays and does not allow to use Eq. (3) with $`G_1^e`$ and $`L_{3b}^e`$ being constant. In the present method we do not rely on the adsorption isotherm, but the error in $`L_{3b}`$ is determined only by the absolute inaccuracy of $`\sigma `$ and is at most 30%.

Appearance of a superfluid 2D H$``$ on the cold spot is expected to manifest itself as an abrupt change of the density profile and ESR lineshape. In this work superfluidity was not yet observed. The highest surface density $`\sigma 5\times 10^{12}`$ cm-2 was achieved at $`T_s100`$ mK corresponding to the quantum degeneracy degree of about 1.5. Lowering the temperature of the sample cell below 110 mK or increasing the bulk density above $`n2\times 10^{14}`$ cm-2 was found to excessively increase the recombination rate on the cell walls thus overheating the 2D H$``$ on the cold spot. On the other hand, when the cell walls were warmer than 150 mK we could not cool the spot sufficiently due to a heat flux through the spot substrate and thermal accomodation of the atoms from the bulk. When designing the cell, three-body recombination on the spot was thought to be faster than what it turned out to be and this was the reason to limit the spot size. However, one-body surface relaxation outside the spot was observed to give the dominant contribution to the decay of the sample and appeared to be the main limitation in the present experiments. We succeeded in decreasing the rate of one-body relaxation to $`G_17\times 10^2`$ s-1 at $`T_c100`$ mK, smallest ever reported in H$``$ experiments Bell et al. (1986); Reynolds et al. (1985); Sprik et al. (1986); Mosk et al. (1998). Yet in future experiments one should find a way to reduce the $`G_1`$ even further, e.g., by covering the cell walls with a diamagnetic insulating material Mosk (1999). Another modification to get higher surface densities and to make the study of surface recombination more quantitative would be to make the cold spot larger and thermally better insulated from the cell. On the basis of the upper limit for $`L_{3b}`$ obtained in the present work we estimate that such modifications would result in an increase of the degeneracy parameter $`\sigma \mathrm{\Lambda }^23`$, where the three-body recombination probability starts to decrease due to quantum correlation effects Safonov et al. (1998).

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank I.I. Lukashevich and A.A. Kharitonov for collaboration. This work was supported by the Academy of Finland, Wihuri Foundation, INTAS, the Russian Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology and the RFBR.


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# Conceptual tensions between quantum mechanics and general relativity: Are there experimental consequences?

## Introduction

> *“Mercy and Truth are met together; Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other.”* (Psalm 85:10)

In this Festschrift Volume in honor of John Archibald Wheeler, I would like to take a fresh look at the intersection between two fields to which he devoted much of his research life: general relativity (GR) and quantum mechanics (QM). As evidence of his keen interest in these two subjects, I would cite two examples from my own experience. When I was an undergraduate at Princeton University during the years from 1957 to 1961, he was my adviser. One of his duties was to assign me topics for my junior paper and for my senior thesis. For my junior paper, I was assigned the topic: Compare the complementarity and the uncertainty principles of quantum mechanics: Which is more fundamental? For my senior thesis, I was assigned the topic: How to quantize general relativity? As Wheeler taught me, more than half of science is devoted to the asking of the right question, while often less than half is devoted to the obtaining of the correct answer, but not always!

In the same spirit, I would like to offer up here some questions concerning conceptual tensions between GR and QM, which hopefully can be answered in the course of time by experiments, with a view towards probing the tension between the concepts of $`locality`$ in GR and $`nonlocality`$ in QM. I hope that it would be appropriate and permissible to ask some questions here concerning this tension. It is not the purpose of this Chapter to present demonstrated results, but to suggest heuristically some interesting avenues of research which might lead to future experimental discoveries.

One question that naturally arises at the border between GR and QM is the following: Are there novel experimental or observational ways of studying quantized fields coupled to curved spacetime? This question has already arisen in the context of the vacuum embedded in curved spacetime DaviesBook , but I would like to extend this to possible experimental studies of the ground state of a nonrelativistic quantum many-body system with off-diagonal long-range order, i.e., a “quantum fluid,” viewed as a quantized field, coupled to curved spacetime. As we shall see, this will naturally lead to the further question: Are there $`quantum`$ methods to detect gravitational radiation other than the $`classical`$ ones presently being used in the Weber bar and LIGO (i.e., the “Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory”) MTW Tyson Taylor ?

As I see it, the three main pillars of physics at the beginning of the 21st century are quantum mechanics, relativity, and statistical mechanics, which correspond to Einstein’s three papers of 1905. There exist conceptual tensions at the intersections of these three fields of physics (see Figure 1). It seems worthwhile re-examining these tensions, since they may entail important experimental consequences. In this introduction, I shall only briefly mention three conceptual tensions between these three fields: $`locality`$ versus $`nonlocality`$ of physical systems, $`objectivity`$ versus $`subjectivity`$ of probabilities in quantum and statistical mechanics (the problem of the nature of information), and $`reversibility`$ versus $`irreversibility`$ of time (the problem of the arrows of time). Others in this Volume will discuss the second and the third of these tensions in detail. I shall limit myself to a discussion of the first conceptual tension concerning locality versus nonlocality, mainly in the context of GR and QM. (However, in my Solvay lecture ChiaoSolvay , I have discussed the other two tensions in more detail. See also my Rome lecture ChiaoRome  for a discussion of three different kinds of quantum nonlocalities).

Why examine conceptual tensions? A brief answer is that they often lead to new experimental discoveries. It suffices to give just one example from late 19th and early 20th century physics: the clash between the venerable concepts of $`continuity`$ and $`discreteness`$. The concept of continuity, which goes back to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (“everything flows”), clashed with the concept of discreteness, which goes back to Democritus (“everything is composed of atoms”). Eventually, Heraclitus’s concept of continuity, or more specifically that of the $`continuum`$, was embodied in the idea of $`field`$ in the classical field theory associated with Maxwell’s equations. The atomic hypothesis of Democritus was eventually embodied in the kinetic theory of gases in statistical mechanics.

Conceptual tensions, or what Wheeler calls the “clash of ideas,” need not lead to a complete victory of one conflicting idea over the other, so as to eliminate the opposing idea completely, as seemed to be the case in the 19th century, when Newton’s idea of “corpuscles of light” was apparently completely eliminated in favor of the wave theory of light. Rather, there may result a reconciliation of the two conflicting ideas, which then often leads to many fruitful experimental consequences.

Experiments on blackbody radiation in the 19th century were exploring the intersection, or borderline, between Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism and statistical mechanics, where the conceptual tension between continuity and discreteness was most acute, and eventually led to the discovery of quantum mechanics through the work of Planck. The concept of $`discreteness`$ metamorphosed into the concept of the $`quantum`$. This led in turn to the concept of discontinuity embodied in Bohr’s quantum jump hypothesis, which was necessitated by the indivisibility of the quantum. Many experiments, such as Millikan’s measurements of $`h/e`$, were in turn motivated by Einstein’s heuristic theory of the photoelectric effect based on the “light quantum” hypothesis. Newton’s idea of “corpuscles of light” metamorphosed into the concept of the $`photon`$. This is a striking example showing how that many fruitful experimental consequences can come out of one particular conceptual tension.

Within a broader cultural context, there have been many acute conceptual tensions between science and faith, which have lasted over many centuries. Perhaps the above examples of the fruitfulness of the resolution of conceptual tensions within physics itself may serve as a parable concerning the possibility of a peaceful reconciliation of these great cultural tensions, which may eventually lead to the further growth of both science and faith. Hence we should not shy away from conceptual tensions, but rather explore them with an honest, bold, and open spirit.

## I Three conceptual tensions between quantum mechanics and general relativity

Here I shall focus my attention on some specific conceptual tensions at the intersection between QM and GR. A commonly held viewpoint within the physics community today is that the only place where conceptual tensions between these two fields can arise is at the microscopic Planck length scale ($`1.6\times 10^{33}`$ cm), where quantum fluctuations of spacetime (“quantum foam”) occur. Hence manifestations of these tensions would be expected to occur only in conjunction with extremely high-energy phenomena, accessible presumably only in astrophysical settings, such as the early Big Bang.

However, I believe that this point of view is too narrow. There exist other conceptual tensions at macroscopic, non-Planckian distance scales ($`1.6\times 10^{33}`$ cm), which should be accessible in low-energy laboratory experiments involving macroscopic QM phenomena. It should be kept in mind that QM not only describes $`microscopic`$ phenomena, but also $`macroscopic`$ phenomena, such as superconductivity. Specifically, I would like to point out the following three conceptual tensions:

(1) The spatial nonseparability of physical systems due to entangled states in QM, versus the complete spatial separability of all physical systems in GR.

(2) The equivalence principle of GR, versus the uncertainty principle of QM.

(3) The mixed state (e.g., of an entangled bipartite system, one part of which falls into a black hole; the other of which flies off to infinity) in GR, versus the pure state of such a system in QM.

Conceptual tension (3) concerns the problem of the natures of information and entropy in QM and GR. Again, since others will discuss this tension in detail in this Volume, I shall limit myself only to a discussion of the first two of these tensions.

These conceptual tensions originate from the superposition principle of QM, which finds its most dramatic expression in the entangled state of two or more spatially separated particles of a single physical system, which in turn leads to Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) effects. It should be emphasized here that it is necessary to consider two or more particles for observing EPR phenomena, since only then does the configuration space of these particles no longer coincide with that of ordinary spacetime. For example, consider the entangled state of two spin 1/2 particles in a “singlet” state initially prepared in the total spin zero state

$$|S=0=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left\{|_1|_2|_1|_2\right\}\text{ ,}$$
(1)
in which the two particles in a spontaneous decay process fly arbitrarily far away from each other into two space-like separated regions of spacetime, where measurements on spin by means of two Stern-Gerlach apparati are performed separately on these two particles.

As a result of the quantum entanglement arising from the $`superposition`$ of $`product`$ states, such as in the above singlet state suggested by Bohm in connection with the EPR “paradox,” it is in general impossible to factorize this state into products of probability amplitudes. Hence it is impossible to factorize the $`joint`$ probabilities in the measurements of spin of this two-particle system. This mathematical $`nonfactorizability`$ implies a physical $`nonseparability`$ of the system, and leads to instantaneous, space-like correlations-at-a-distance in the joint measurements of the properties (e.g., spin) of discrete events, such as in the coincidence detection of “clicks” in Geiger counters placed behind the two distant Stern-Gerlach apparati. Bell’s inequalities place an upper limit the amount of angular correlations possible for these two-particle decays, based on the $`independence`$ (and hence $`factorizability`$) of the joint probabilities of spatially separated measurements in any local realistic theories, such as those envisioned by Einstein.

Violations of Bell’s inequalities have been extensively experimentally demonstrated Gisin2002 . Therefore these observations cannot be explained on the basis of any local realistic world view; however, they were predicted by QM. If we assume a $`realistic`$ world view, i.e., that the “clicks” of the Geiger counters really happened, then we must conclude that we have observed $`nonlocal`$ features of the world. Therefore a fundamental spatial nonseparability of physical systems has been revealed by these Bell-inequalities-violating EPR experiments Chiao and Garrison . It should be emphasized that the observed space-like EPR correlations occur on macroscopic, non-Planckian distance scales, where the conceptual tension (1) between QM and GR becomes most acute.

Although some of these same issues arise in the conceptual tensions between quantum mechanics and $`special`$ relativity, there are new issues which crop up due to the long-range nature of the gravitational force, which are absent in special relativity, but present in $`general`$ relativity. The problem of quantum fields in $`curved`$ spacetime can be more interesting than in $`flat`$ spacetime.

Gravity is a long-range force. It is therefore natural to expect that experimental consequences of conceptual tension (1) should manifest themselves most dramatically in the interaction of macroscopically coherent quantum matter, which exhibit long-range EPR correlations, with long-range gravitational fields. In particular, the question naturally arises: How do entangled states, such as the above singlet state, interact with tidal fields, such as those in gravitational radiation? Stated more generally: How do quantum many-body systems with entangled ground states possessing off-diagonal long-range order couple to curved spacetime? (“Off-diagonal long-range order” (ODLRO) means that the off-diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix in a coordinate space representation of the system are nonvanishing and possess long-range order, i.e., macroscopic quantum phase coherence.) It is therefore natural to look to the realm of macroscopic phenomena associated with quantum fluids, rather than phenomena at microscopic, Planck length scales, in our search for these experimental consequences.

Already a decade or so before Bell’s ground-breaking work on his inequality, Einstein himself was clearly worried by the radical, spatial nonseparability of physical systems in quantum mechanics. Einstein wrote Einstein-Born :

> “Let us consider a physical system S12, which consists of two part-systems S1 and S2. These two part-systems may have been in a state of mutual physical interaction at an earlier time. We are, however, considering them at a time when this interaction is at an end. Let the entire system be completely described in the quantum mechanical sense by a $`\psi `$-function $`\psi _{12}`$ of the coordinates $`\mathrm{q}_1`$,… and $`\mathrm{q}_2`$,… of the two part-systems ($`\psi _{12}`$ cannot be represented as a product of the form $`\psi _1\psi _2`$ but only as a sum of such products \[i.e., as an entangled state\]). At time t let the two part-systems be separated from each other in space, in such a way that $`\psi _{12}`$ only differs from zero when $`\mathrm{q}_1`$,… belong to a limited part R1 of space and $`\mathrm{q}_2`$,… belong to a part R2 separated from R1. . . .
>
> “There seems to me no doubt that those physicists who regard the descriptive methods of quantum mechanics as definitive in principle would react to this line of thought in the following way: they would drop the requirement for the independent existence of the physical reality present in different parts of space; they would be justified in pointing out that the quantum theory nowhere makes explicit use of this requirement.” \[Italics mine.\]

This radical, spatial nonseparability of a physical system consisting of two or more entangled particles in QM, which seems to undermine the very possibility of the concept of field in physics, is in an obvious conceptual tension with the complete spatial separability of any physical system into its separate parts in GR, which is a local realistic field theory.

However, I should hasten to add immediately that the battle-tested concept of field has of course been extremely fruitful not only at the classical but also at the quantum level. Relativistic quantum field theories have been very well validated, at least in an approximate, correspondence-principle sense in which spacetime itself is treated classically, i.e., as being describable by a rigidly flat, Minkowskian metric, which has no possibility of any quantum dynamics. There have been tremendous successes of quantum electrodynamics and electroweak gauge field theory (and, to a lesser extent, quantum chromodynamics) in passing all known high-energy experimental tests. Thus the conceptual tension between $`continuity`$ (used in the concept of the spacetime $`continuum`$) and $`discreteness`$ (used in the concept of quantized excitations of a field in classical spacetime) seems to have been successfully reconciled in these relativistic quantum field theories. Nevertheless, the problem of a satisfactory relativistic treatment of quantum measurement within these theories remains an open one Peres .

## II Is there any difference between the response of classical and quantum fluids to tidal gravitational fields?

Motivated by the above discussion, a more specific question arises: Is there any difference between classical and quantum matter when it is embedded in curved spacetime, for instance, in the $`linear`$ response to the gravitational tidal field of the Earth of a $`classical`$ liquid drop, as compared to that of a $`quantum`$ one, such as a liquid drop of superfluid helium? In order to answer this question, consider a gedanken experiment to observe the shape of a freely floating liquid drop placed at the center of the Space Station sketched in Figure 2.

At first glance, the answer to this question would seem to be “no,” since the equivalence principle would seem to imply that all freely falling bodies, whether classical or quantum, must respond to gravitation, e.g., Earth’s gravity, in a *mass-independent*, or more generally, in a *composition-independent* way. Thus whether the internal dynamics of the particles composing the liquid drop obeys classical mechanics or quantum mechanics would seem to make no difference in the response of this body to gravity. Just as in the case of the response of the tides of the Earth’s oceans to the Moon’s gravity, the shape of the surface of a liquid of any mass or composition would be determined by the equipotential surfaces of the total gravitational field, and should be independent of the mass or composition of the liquid, provided that the fluid particles can move $`freely`$ inside the fluid, and provided that the surface tension of the liquid can be neglected.

However, one must carefully distinguish between the response of the center of mass of the liquid drop inside the Space Station to Earth’s gravity, and the response of the relative motions of particles within the drop to Earth’s tidal gravitational field. Whereas the former clearly obeys the mass- and composition-independence of the equivalence principle, one must examine the latter with more care. First, one must define what one means by “classical” and “quantum” bodies. By a “classical body,” we shall mean here a body whose particles have undergone $`decoherence`$ in the sense of Zurek Zurek , so that no macroscopic, Schrödinger-cat-like states for widely spatially separated subsystems (i.e., the fluid elements inside the classical liquid drop) can survive the rapid decoherence arising from the environment. This is true for the vast majority of bodies typically encountered in the laboratory. It is the rapid decoherence of the spatially separated subsystems of a classical body that makes the spatial separability of a system into its parts, and hence $`locality`$, a valid concept.

Nevertheless, there exist exceptions. For example, a macroscopically coherent quantum system, e.g., a quantum fluid such as the electron pairs inside a superconductor, usually possesses an energy gap which separates the ground state of the system from all possible excited states of the system. Cooper pairs of electrons in a Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS) ground state are in the entangled spin singlet states given by Eq.(1). At sufficiently low temperatures, such a quantum fluid develops a macroscopic quantum coherence, as is manifested by a macroscopic quantum phase which becomes well defined at each point inside the fluid. The resulting macroscopic wavefunction must remain single valued, in spite of small perturbations, such as those due to weak external fields.

The energy gap, such the BCS gap, protects spatially separated, but entangled, particles within the body, such as the electrons which members of Cooper pairs inside a superconductor, against decoherence. Therefore, these quantum fluids are protectively entangled, in the sense that the existence of some sort of energy gap separates the nondegenerate ground state of the system from all excited states, and hence prevents any rapid decoherence due to the environment. Under these circumstances, the macroscopically entangled ground state of a quantum fluid, becomes a meaningful $`global`$ concept, and the notion of $`nonlocality`$, that is, the spatial nonseparability of a system into its parts, enters in an intrinsic way into the problem of the interaction of matter with gravitational fields.

For example, imagine a liquid drop consisting of superfluid helium at zero Kelvin, which is in a pure quantum state, floating at the center of the Space Station, as pictured in Figure 3. Although the microscopic many-body problem for this superfluid has not been completely solved, there exist a successful macroscopic, phenomenological description based on the Gross-Pitaevskii equation

$$\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}^2\mathrm{\Psi }+V(x,y,z)\mathrm{\Psi }+\beta \left|\mathrm{\Psi }\right|^2\mathrm{\Psi }=\alpha \mathrm{\Psi }\text{ ,}$$
(2)
where $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is the macroscopic complex order parameter, and the potential $`V(x,y,z)`$ describes Earth’s gravity (including its tidal gravitational potential, but neglecting for the moment the frame-dragging term coupled to superfluid currents), along with the surface tension effects which enters into the determination of the free boundary of the liquid drop. Macroscopic quantum entanglement is contained in the nonlinear term $`\beta \left|\mathrm{\Psi }\right|^2\mathrm{\Psi }`$, which arises microscopically from atom-atom $`S`$-wave scattering events, just as in the case of the recently observed atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). (The parameter $`\beta `$ is directly proportional to the $`S`$-wave scattering length $`a`$; the interaction between two atoms in a individual scattering event entangles the two scattering atoms together, so that a measurement of the momentum of one atom immediately determines the momentum of the other atom which participated in the scattering event.) As in the case of the BECs, where this equation has been successfully applied to predict many observed phenomena, the physical meaning of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is that it is the condensate wavefunction.

There should exist near the inside surface of the superfluid liquid drop, closed trajectories for helium atom wave packets propagating at grazing incidence, which, in the correspondence-principle limit, should lead to the atomic analog of the “whispering gallery modes” of light, such as those observed inside microspheres immersed in superfluid helium Braginsky Haroche . In the case of light, these modes can possess extremely high $`Q`$s (of the order of $`10^9`$), so that the quadrupolar distortion from a spherical shape due to tidal forces can thereby be very sensitively measured optically (the degeneracy of these modes has been observed to be split by nontidal quadrupolar distortions Chang ). The atomic wave packets propagating at grazing incidence near the surface are actually those of individual helium atoms dressed by the collective excitations of the superfluid, such as phonons, rotons, and ripplons CriticalAngle . Application of the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization rule to the closed trajectories which correspond to the whispering gallery modes for atoms should lead to a $`quantization`$ of the sizes and shapes of the superfluid drop. For a classical liquid drop, no such quantization occurs because of the decoherence of an atom after it has propagated around these large, polygonal closed trajectories. Hence there should exist a $`difference`$ between classical and quantum matter in their respective responses to gravitational tidal fields. At a fundamental level, this difference arises from the quantum phase shift which is observable in the shift of the interference fringe pattern that results from an atom travelling coherently along two nearby, but intersecting, geodesics in the presence of spacetime curvature GRGessay .

Another difference between a classical and a quantum liquid drop is the possibility of the presence of $`quantized`$ vortices in the latter, along with their associated persistent, macroscopic current flows. These quantum flows possess quantized vorticities of $`\pm h/m`$, where $`m`$ is the mass of the superfluid atom. The question naturally arises: How do two such vortices placed symmetrically around the center of mass of a superfluid liquid drop react to the presence of tidal forces associated with gravitational radiation? I suspect that these vortices will move *at right angles* in response to these forces in accordance with the Magnus force law, which is a Lorentz-like force law for vortex motion in superfluids. The perpendicularity of this kind of motion is manifestly different from that a test particle of a classical “perfect” fluid.

Such $`differences`$ in the linear response between classical and quantum matter in the induced quadrupole moment $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q_{ij}`$ of the liquid drop can be characterized by a linear equation relating $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q_{ij}`$ to the metric deviations from flat spacetime $`h_{kl}`$ by means of a phenomenological susceptibility tensor $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}`$, viz.,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }Q_{ij}=\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}h_{kl}\text{ ,}$$
(3)
where $`i,j,k,l`$ are spatial indices (repeated indices are summed). The susceptibility tensor $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}`$ should in principle be calculable from the many-body current-current correlation function in the linear-response theory of superfluid helium Forster .

Here, however, I shall limit myself only to some general remarks concerning $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}`$ based on the Kramers-Kronig relations. Since the response of the liquid drop to weak tidal gravitational fields is $`linear`$ and $`causal`$, it follows that

$$\mathrm{Re}\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}(\omega )=\frac{1}{\pi }P_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\omega ^{}\frac{\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}(\omega ^{})}{\omega ^{}\omega }$$
(4)
$$\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}(\omega )=\frac{1}{\pi }P_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\omega ^{}\frac{\mathrm{Re}\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}(\omega ^{})}{\omega ^{}\omega }\text{ ,}$$
(5)
where $`P`$ denotes Cauchy’s Principal Value. From the first of these relations, there follows the zero-frequency sum rule

$$\mathrm{Re}\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}(\omega 0)=\frac{2}{\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\omega ^{}\frac{\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}(\omega ^{})}{\omega ^{}}\text{ .}$$
(6)
This equation tells us that $`if`$ there should exist a difference in the linear response between classical and quantum matter to tidal fields at DC (i.e., $`\omega 0`$) in the quadrupolar shape of the liquid drop, $`then`$ there must also exist a difference in the rate of absorption or emission of gravitational radiation due to the imaginary part of the susceptibility $`\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Delta }\chi _{ij}^{}{}_{}{}^{kl}(\omega ^{})`$ between classical and quantum matter. The purpose here is not to calculate how big this difference is, but merely to point out that such a difference exists. The above considerations also apply equally well to an atomic BEC, indeed, to any quantum fluid, in its linear response to tidal fields.

## III Quantum fluids versus perfect fluids

At this point, I would like to return to the more general question: Where to look for experimental consequences of conceptual tension (1)? The above discussion suggests the following answer: Look at macroscopically entangled, and thus radically delocalized, quantum states encountered, for example, in superconductors, superfluids, atomic BECs, and quantum Hall fluids, i.e., in what I shall henceforth call “quantum fluids.” Again it should be stressed that since gravity is a long-range force, it should be possible to perform low-energy experiments to probe the interaction between gravity and these kinds of quantum matter on large, non-Planckian distance scales, without the necessity of performing high-energy experiments, as is required for probing the short-range weak and strong forces on very short distance scales. The quantum many-body problem, even in its nonrelativistic limit, may lead to nontrivial interactions with weak, long-range gravitational fields, as the above example suggests. One is thereby strongly motivated to study the interaction of these quantum fluids with weak gravity, in particular, with gravitational radiation.

One manifestation of this conceptual tension is that the way one views a quantum fluid in QM is conceptually radically different from the way that one views a perfect fluid in GR, where only the $`local`$ properties of the fluid, which can conceptually always be spatially separated into independent, infinitesimal fluid elements, are to be considered. For example, interstellar dust particles can be thought of as being a perfect fluid in GR, provided that we can neglect all interactions between such particles Colin . At a fundamental level, the spatial separability of the perfect fluid in GR arises from the rapid decoherence of quantum superposition states (i.e., Schrödinger cat-like states) of various interstellar dust particles at widely separated spatial positions within a dust cloud, due to interactions with the environment. Hence the notion of $`locality`$ is valid here. The response of these dust particles in the resulting $`classical`$ many-body system to a gravitational wave passing over it, is characterized by the local, classical, free-fall motion of each individual dust particle.

In contrast to the classical case, due to their radical delocalization, particles in a macroscopically coherent quantum many-body system, i.e., a quantum fluid, are entangled with each other in such a way that there arises an unusual “quantum rigidity” of the system, closely associated with what London called “the rigidity of the macroscopic wavefunction” London . One example of such a rigid quantum fluid is the “incompressible quantum fluid” in both the integer and the fractional quantum Hall effects Laughlin . This rigidity arises from the fact that there exists an energy gap (for example, the quantum Hall gap) which separates the ground state from all the low-lying excitations of the system. This gap, as pointed out above, also serves to protect the quantum entanglement present in the ground state from decoherence due to the environment, provided that the temperature of these quantum systems is sufficiently low. Thus these quantum fluids exhibit a kind of “gap-protected quantum entanglement.” Furthermore, the gap leads to an evolution in accordance with the quantum adiabatic theorem: The system stays adiabatically in a rigidly unaltered ground state, which leads in first-order perturbation theory to quantum diamagnetic effects. Examples of consequences of this “rigidity of the wavefunction” are the Meissner effect in the case of superconductors, in which the magnetic field is expelled from their interiors, and the Chern-Simons effect in the quantum Hall fluid, in which the photon acquires a mass inside the fluid.

## IV Spontaneous symmetry breaking, off-diagonal long-range order, and superluminality

The unusual states of matter in these quantum fluids usually possess spontaneous symmetry breaking, in which the ground state, or the “vacuum” state, of the quantum many-body system breaks the symmetry present in the free energy of the system. The physical vacuum, which is in an intrinsically nonlocal ground state of relativistic quantum field theories, possesses certain similarities to the ground state of a superconductor, for example. Weinberg has argued that in superconductivity, the spontaneous symmetry breaking process results in a broken $`gauge`$ invariance Weinberg(Nambu) , an idea which traces back to the early work of Nambu Nambu .

The Meissner effect in a superconductor is closely analogous to the Higgs mechanism of high-energy physics, in which the physical vacuum also spontaneously breaks local gauge invariance, and can also be viewed as forming a condensate which possesses a single-valued complex order parameter with a well-defined local phase. From this viewpoint, the appearance of the London penetration depth for a superconductor is analogous in an inverse manner to the appearance of a mass for a gauge boson, such as that of the $`W`$ or $`Z`$ boson. Thus, the photon, viewed as a gauge boson, acquires a mass inside the superconductor, such that its Compton wavelength becomes the London penetration depth. Similar considerations apply to the effect of the Chern-Simons term in the quantum Hall fluid.

Closely related to this spontaneous symmetry breaking process is the appearance of Yang’s off-diagonal long-range order (ODLRO) of the reduced density matrix in the coordinate-space representation for most of these macroscopically coherent quantum systems yang . In particular, there seems to be no limit on how far apart Cooper pairs can be inside a single superconductor before they lose their quantum coherence. ODLRO and spontaneous symmetry breaking are both purely quantum concepts with no classical analogs.

Within a quantum fluid, there should arise both the phenomenon of instantaneous EPR correlations-at-a-distance, and the phenomenon of London’s “rigidity of the wavefunction,” i.e., a Meissner-like response to radiation fields. Both phenomena involve at the microscopic level $`interactions`$ of entangled particles with an external environment, either through local $`measurements`$, such as in Bell-type measurements, or through local $`perturbations`$, such as those arising from radiation fields interacting locally with these particles.

Although at first sight the notion of “infinite quantum rigidity” would seem to imply infinite velocities, and hence would seem to violate relativity, there are in fact no violations of relativistic causality here, since the instantaneous EPR $`correlations`$-at-a-distance (as seen by an observer in the center-of-mass frame) are not instantaneous $`signals`$-at-a-distance, which would instantaneously connect causes to effects ChiaoHeisenberg . Also, experiments have verified the existence of superluminal wave packet propagations, i.e., faster-than-$`c`$, infinite, and even negative group velocities, for finite-bandwidth, analytic wave packets in the excitations of a wide range of physical systems ChiaoSolvay Superluminal . An analytic function, e.g., a Gaussian wave packet, contains sufficient information in its early tail such that a causal medium can, during its propagation, reconstruct the entire wave packet with a superluminal pulse advancement, and with little distortion. Relativistic causality forbids only the $`front`$ velocity, i.e., the velocity of $`discontinuities`$ which connect causes to their effects, from exceeding the speed of light $`c`$, but does not forbid a wave packet’s $`group`$ velocity from being superluminal. One example is the observed superluminal tunneling of single-photon wave packets Steinberg . Thus the notion of “infinite quantum rigidity,” although counterintuitive, does not in fact violate relativistic causality.

## V The equivalence versus the uncertainty principle

Concerning conceptual tension (2), the equivalence principle is formulated at its outset using the concept of “trajectory,” or equivalently, “geodesic.” By contrast, Bohr has taught us that the very $`concept`$ of trajectory must be abandoned at fundamental level, because of the uncertainty principle. Thus the equivalence and the uncertainty principles are in a fundamental conceptual tension. The equivalence principle is based on the notion of locality, since it requires that the region of space, inside which two trajectories of two nearby freely-falling objects of different masses, compositions, or thermodynamic states, are to be compared, go to zero volume, before the principle becomes exact. This limiting procedure is in a conceptual tension with the uncertainty principle, since taking the limit of the volume of space going to zero, within which these objects are to be measured, makes their momenta infinitely uncertain. However, whenever the correspondence principle holds, the center of mass of a quantum wavepacket (for a single particle or for an entire quantum object) moves according to Ehrenfest’s theorem along a classical trajectory, and $`then`$ it is possible to reconcile these two principles.

Davies Davies  has come up with a simple example of a quantum violation of the equivalence principle onofrio Adunas Herdegen : Consider two perfectly elastic balls, e.g., one made out of rubber, and one made out of steel, bouncing against a perfectly elastic table. If we drop the two balls from the same height above the table, their classical trajectories, and hence their classical periods of oscillation will be identical, and independent of the mass or composition of the balls. This is a consequence of the equivalence principle. However, quantum mechanically, there will be the phenomenon of tunneling, in which the two balls can penetrate into the classically forbidden region $`above`$ their turning points. The extra time spent by the balls in the classically forbidden region due to tunneling will depend on their mass (and thus on their composition). Thus there will in principle be mass-dependent quantum corrections of the classical periods of the bouncing motion of these balls, which will lead to quantum violations of the equivalence principle.

There might exist macroscopic situations in which Ehrenfest’s form of the correspondence principle fails. Imagine that one is inside a macroscopic quantum fluid, such as a big piece of superconconductor. Even in the limit of a very large size and a very large number of particles inside this object (i.e., in the thermodynamic limit), there exists no correspondence-principle limit in which classical trajectories or geodesics for the relative motion of electrons which are members of Cooper pairs in Bohm singlet states within the superconductor, make any sense. This is due to the superposition principle and the entanglement of a macroscopic number of identical particles inside these quantum fluids. Nevertheless, the motion of the center of mass of the superconductor may obey perfectly the equivalence principle, and may therefore be conceptualized in terms of a geodesic.

## VI Quantum fluids as antennas for gravitational radiation

Can the quantum rigidity arising from the energy gap of a quantum fluid circumvent the problem of the tiny rigidity of classical matter, such as that of the normal metals used in Weber bars, in their feeble responses to gravitational radiation? One consequence of the tiny rigidity of classical matter is the fact that the speed of sound in a Weber bar is typically five orders of magnitude less than the speed of light. In order to transfer energy coherently from a gravitational wave by classical means, for example, by acoustical modes inside the bar to some local detector, e.g., a piezoelectric crystal glued to the middle of the bar, the length scale of the Weber bar $`L`$ is limited to a distance scale on the order of the speed of sound times the period of the gravitational wave, i.e., an acoustical wavelength $`\lambda _{sound}`$, which is typically five orders of magnitude smaller than the gravitational radiation wavelength $`\lambda `$ to be detected. This makes the Weber bar, which is thereby limited in its length to $`L\lambda _{sound}`$, much too short an antenna to couple efficiently to free space.

However, rigid quantum objects, such as a two-dimensional electron gas in a strong magnetic field which exhibits the quantum Hall effect, in what Laughlin has called an “incompressible quantum fluid” Laughlin , are not limited by these classical considerations, but can have macroscopic quantum phase coherence on a length scale $`L`$ on the same order as (or even much greater than) the gravitational radiation wavelength $`\lambda `$. Since the radiation efficiency of a quadrupole antenna scales as the length of the antenna $`L`$ to the fourth power when $`L<<\lambda `$, such quantum antennas should be much more efficient in coupling to free space than classical ones like the Weber bar by at least a factor of $`\left(\lambda /\lambda _{sound}\right)^4`$.

Weinberg gives a measure of the radiative coupling efficiency $`\eta _{rad}`$ of a Weber bar of mass $`M`$, length $`L`$, and velocity of sound $`v_{sound}`$, in terms of a branching ratio for the emission of gravitational radiation by the Weber bar, relative to the emission of heat, i.e., the ratio of the $`rate`$ of emission of gravitational radiation $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{grav}`$ relative to the $`rate`$ of the decay of the acoustical oscillations into heat $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{heat}`$, which is given by Weinberg

$$\eta _{rad}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{grav}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{heat}}=\frac{64GMv_{sound}^4}{15L^2c^5\mathrm{\Gamma }_{heat}}3\times 10^{34}\text{ ,}$$
(7)
where $`G`$ is Newton’s constant. The quartic power dependence of the efficiency $`\eta _{rad}`$ on the velocity of sound $`v_{sound}`$ arises from the quartic dependence of the coupling efficiency to free space of a quadrupole antenna upon its length $`L`$, when $`L<<\lambda `$.

The long-range quantum phase coherence of a quantum fluid allows the typical size $`L`$ of a quantum antenna to be comparable to the wavelength $`\lambda `$. Thus the phase rigidity of the quantum fluid allows us in principle to replace the velocity of sound $`v_{sound}`$ by the speed of light $`c`$. Therefore, quantum fluids can be more efficient than Weber bars, based on the $`v_{sound}^4`$ factor alone, by twenty orders of magnitude, i.e.,

$$\left(\frac{c}{v_{sound}}\right)^410^{20}\text{ .}$$
(8)
Hence quantum fluids could be much more efficient receivers of this radiation than Weber bars for detecting astrophysical sources of gravitational radiation. This has previously been suggested to be the case for superfluids and superconductors AnandanChiao PengTorr .

Another important property of quantum fluids lies in the fact that they can possess an extremely low dissipation coefficient $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{heat}`$, as can be inferred, for example, by the existence of persistent currents in superfluids that can last for indefinitely long periods of time. Thus the impedance matching of the quantum antenna to free space Impedance , or equivalently, the branching ratio of energy emitted into the gravitational radiation channel rather than into the heat channel, can be much larger than that calculated above for the classical Weber bar.

## VII Minimal-coupling rule for a quantum Hall fluid

The electron, which possesses charge $`e`$, rest mass $`m`$, and spin $`s=1/2`$, obeys the Dirac equation. The nonrelativistic, interacting, fermionic many-body system, such as that in the quantum Hall fluid, should obey the minimal-coupling rule which originates from the covariant-derivative coupling of the Dirac electron to curved spacetime, viz., DaviesBook Weinberg

$$p_\mu p_\mu eA_\mu \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{AB}\omega _\mu ^{AB}$$
(9)
where $`p_\mu `$ is the electron’s four-momentum, $`A_\mu `$ is the electromagnetic four-potential, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{AB}`$ are the Dirac $`\gamma `$ matrices in curved spacetime with tetrad (or vierbein) $`A,B`$ indices, and $`\omega _\mu ^{AB}`$ are the components of the spin connection

$$\omega _\mu ^{AB}=e^{A\nu }_\mu e_{}^{B}{}_{\nu }{}^{}$$
(10)
where $`e^{A\nu }`$ and $`e_{}^{B}{}_{\nu }{}^{}`$ are tetrad four-vectors, which are sets of four orthogonal unit vectors of spacetime, such as those corresponding to a local inertial frame.

Spacetime curvature directly affects the phase of the wavefunction, leading to fringe shifts of quantum-mechanical interference patterns within atomic interferometers GRGessay . Moreover, it is well known that the vector potential $`A_\mu `$ will also lead to a quantum interference effect, in which the gauge-invariant Aharonov-Bohm phase becomes observable. Similarly, the spin connection $`\omega _\mu ^{AB}`$, in its Abelian holonomy, should also lead to a quantum interference effect, in which the gauge-invariant Berry phase Chiao-Wu  becomes observable. The following Berry phase picture of a spin coupled to curved spacetime leads to an intuitive way of understanding why there could exist a coupling between a classical GR wave and a classical EM wave mediated by a quantum fluid with charge and spin, such as the quantum Hall fluid.

Due to its gyroscopic nature, the spin vector of an electron undergoes *parallel transport* during the passage of a GR wave. The spin of the electron is constrained to lie inside the space-like submanifold of curved spacetime. This is due to the fact that we can always transform to a co-moving frame, such that the electron is at rest at the origin of this frame. In this frame, the spin of the electron must be purely a space-like vector with no time-like component. This imposes an important $`constraint`$ on the motion of the electron’s spin, such that whenever the space-like submanifold of spacetime is disturbed by the passage of a gravitational wave, the spin must remain at all times $`perpendicular`$ to the local time axis. If the spin vector is constrained to follow a conical trajectory during the passage of the gravitational wave, the electron picks up a Berry phase proportional to the solid angle subtended by this conical trajectory after one period of the GR wave.

In a manner similar to the persistent currents induced by the Berry phase in systems with ODLRO Lyanda-Geller , such a Berry phase induces an electrical current in the quantum Hall fluid, which is in a macroscopically coherent ground state Girvin . This macroscopic current generates an EM wave. Thus a GR wave can be converted into an EM wave. By reciprocity, the time-reversed process of the conversion from an EM wave to a GR wave must also be possible.

In the nonrelativistic limit, the four-component Dirac spinor is reduced to a two-component spinor. While the precise form of the nonrelativistic Hamiltonian is not known for the many-body system in a weakly curved spacetime consisting of electrons in a strong magnetic field, I conjecture that it will have the form

$$H=\frac{1}{2m}\left(p_ieA_i\frac{1}{2}\sigma _{ab}\mathrm{\Omega }_i^{ab}\right)^2+V$$
(11)
where $`i`$ is a spatial index, $`a,b`$ are spatial tetrad incides, $`\sigma _{ab}`$ is a two-by-two matrix-valued tensor representing the spin spin , and $`\sigma _{ab}\mathrm{\Omega }_i^{ab}`$ is the nonrelativistic form of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{AB}\omega _\mu ^{AB}`$. Here $`H`$ and $`V`$ are two-by-two matrix operators on the two-component spinor electron wavefunction in the nonrelativistic limit. The potential energy $`V`$ includes the Coulomb interactions between the electrons in the quantum Hall fluid. This nonrelativistic Hamiltonian has the form

$$H=\frac{1}{2m}\left(𝐩𝐚𝐛\right)^2+V\text{ ,}$$
(12)
where the particle index, the spin, and the tetrad indices have all been suppressed. Upon expanding the square, it follows that for a quantum Hall fluid of uniform density, there exists a cross-coupling or interaction Hamiltonian term of the form

$$H_{int}𝐚𝐛\text{ ,}$$
(13)
which couples the electromagnetic $`𝐚`$ field to the gravitational $`𝐛`$ field. In the case of time-varying fields, $`𝐚(t)`$ and $`𝐛(t)`$ represent EM and GR radiation, respectively.

In first-order perturbation theory, the quantum adiabatic theorem predicts that there will arise the cross-coupling energy between the two radiation fields mediated by the quantum fluid

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E\mathrm{\Psi }_0|𝐚𝐛|\mathrm{\Psi }_0$$
(14)
where $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_0`$ is the unperturbed ground state of the system. For the adiabatic theorem to hold, there must exist an energy gap $`E_{gap}`$ (e.g., the quantum Hall energy gap) separating the ground state from all excited states, in conjunction with the approximation that the time variation of the radiation fields must be slow compared to the gap time $`\mathrm{}/E_{gap}`$. This suggests that under these conditions, there might exist an interconversion process between these two kinds of classical radiation fields mediated by this quantum fluid, as indicated in Figure 4.

The question immediately arises: EM radiation is fundamentally a spin 1 (photon) field, but GR radiation is fundamentally a spin 2 (graviton) field. How is it possible to convert one kind of radiation into the other, and not violate the conservation of angular momentum? The answer: The EM wave converts to the GR wave *through a medium*. Here specifically, the medium of conversion consists of a strong DC magnetic field applied to a system of electrons. This system possesses an axis of symmetry pointing along the magnetic field direction, and therefore transforms like a spin 1 object. When coupled to a spin 1 (circularly polarized) EM radiation field, the total system can in principle produce a spin 2 (circularly polarized) GR radiation field, by the addition of angular momentum. However, it remains an open question as to how strong this interconversion process is between EM and GR radiation. Most importantly, the size of the conversion efficiency of this transduction process needs to be determined by experiment.

We can see more clearly the physical significance of the interaction Hamiltonian $`H_{int}𝐚𝐛`$ once we convert it into second quantized form and express it in terms of the creation and annihilation operators for the positive frequency parts of the two kinds of radiation fields, as in the theory of quantum optics, so that in the rotating-wave approximation

$$H_{int}a^{}b+b^{}a\text{ ,}$$
(15)
where the annihilation operator $`a`$ and the creation operator $`a^{}`$ of the single classical mode of the plane-wave EM radiation field corresponding the $`𝐚`$ term, obey the commutation relation $`[a,a^{}]=1`$, and where the annihilation operator $`b`$ and the creation operator $`b^{}`$ of the single classical mode of the plane-wave GR radiation field corresponding to the $`𝐛`$ term, obey the commutation relation $`[b,b^{}]=1`$. (This represents a crude, first attempt at quantizing the gravitational field, which applies only in the case of weak, linearized gravity.) The first term $`a^{}b`$ then corresponds to the process in which a graviton is annihilated and a photon is created inside the quantum fluid, and similarly the second term $`b^{}a`$ corresponds to the reciprocal process, in which a photon is annihilated and a graviton is created inside the quantum fluid.

Let us return once again to the question of whether there exists $`any`$ difference in the response of quantum fluids to tidal fields in gravitational radiation, and the response of classical matter, such as the lattice of ions in a superconductor, for example, to such fields. The essential difference between quantum fluids and classical matter is the presence or absence of macroscopic quantum phase coherence. In quantum matter, there exist quantum interference effects, whereas in classical matter, such as in the lattice of ions of a superconductor, decoherence arising from the environment destroys any such interference. As argued earlier in section 3, the response of quantum fluids and of classical matter to these fields will therefore differ from each other.

In the case of superconductors, Cooper pairs of electrons possess a macroscopic phase coherence, which can lead to an Aharonov-Bohm-type interference absent in the ionic lattice. Similarly, in the quantum Hall fluid, the electrons will also possess macroscopic phase coherence Girvin , which can lead to Berry-phase-type interference absent in the lattice. Furthermore, there exist ferromagnetic superfluids with intrinsic spin, in which an ionic lattice is completely absent, such as in spin-polarized atomic BECs CornellWieman  and in superfluid helium 3 Osheroff . In such ferromagnetic quantum fluids, there exists no ionic lattice to give rise to any classical response which could prevent a quantum response to tidal gravitational radiation fields. The Berry-phase-induced response of the ferromagnetic superfluid arises from the spin connection (see the above minimal-coupling rule, which can be generalized from an electron spin to a nuclear spin coupled to the curved spacetime associated with gravitational radiation), and leads to a purely quantum response to this radiation. The Berry phase induces time-varying macroscopic quantum flows in this ferromagnetic ODLRO system Lyanda-Geller , which transports time-varying orientations of the nuclear magnetic moments. This ferromagnetic superfluid can therefore also in principle convert gravitational into electromagnetic radiation, and vice versa, in a manner similar to the case discussed above for the ferromagnetic quantum Hall fluid.

Thus we expect there to exist differences between classical and quantum fluids in their respective linear responses to weak external perturbations associated with gravitational radiation. Like superfluids, the quantum Hall fluid is an example of a quantum fluid which differs from a classical fluid in its current-current correlation function Forster  in the presence of GR waves. In particular, GR waves can induce a transition of the quantum Hall fluid out of its ground state $`only`$ by exciting a quantized, collective excitation across the quantum Hall energy gap. This collective excitation would involve the correlated motions of a macroscopic number of electrons in this coherent quantum system. Hence the quantum Hall fluid is effectively incompressible and dissipationless, and is thus a good candidate for a quantum antenna.

There exist other situations in which a minimal-coupling rule similar to the one above, arises for $`scalar`$ quantum fields in curved spacetime. DeWitt DeWitt  suggested in 1966 such a coupling in the case of superconductors Solli . Speliotopoulos Speliotopoulos1995  noted in 1995 that a cross-coupling term of the form $`H_{int}𝐚𝐛`$ arose in the long-wavelength limit of a certain quantum Hamiltonian derived from the geodesic deviation equations of motion using the transverse-traceless gauge for GR waves.

Speliotopoulos and I have been working on the problem of the coupling of a scalar quantum field to curved spacetime in a general laboratory frame, which avoids the use of the long-wavelength approximation GLF . In general relativity, there exists in general no global time coordinate that can apply throughout a large system, since for nonstationary metrics, such as those associated with gravitational radiation, the local time axis varies from place to place in the system. It is therefore necessary to set up operationally a general laboratory frame by which an observer can measure the motion of slowly moving test particles in the presence of weak, time-varying gravitational radiation fields.

For either a classical or quantum test particle, the result is that its mass $`m`$ should enter into the Hamiltonian through the replacement of $`𝐩e𝐀`$ by $`𝐩e𝐀m𝐍`$, where $`𝐍`$ is the small, local tidal velocity field induced by gravitational radiation on a test particle located at $`X_a`$ relative to the observer at the origin (i.e., the center of mass) of this frame, where, for the small deviations $`h_{ab}`$ of the metric from that of flat spacetime,

$$N_a=\frac{1}{2}_0^{X_a}\frac{h_{ab}}{t}𝑑X^b.$$
(16)
Due to the quadrupolar nature of gravitational tidal fields, the velocity field $`𝐍`$ for a plane wave grows linearly in magnitude with the distance of the test particle from the center of mass, as seen by the observer located at the center of mass of the system. Therefore, in order to recover the standard result of classical GR that only $`tidal`$ gravitational fields enter into the coupling of radiation and matter, one expects in general that a new characteristic length scale $`L`$ corresponding to the typical size of the distance $`X_a`$ separating the test particle from the observer, must enter into the determination of the coupling constant between radiation and matter. For example, $`L`$ can be the typical size of the detection apparatus (e.g., the length of the arms of the Michelson interferometer used in LIGO), or of the transverse Gaussian wave packet size of the gravitational radiation, so that the coupling constant associated with the Feynman vertex for a graviton-particle interaction becomes proportional to the $`extensive`$ quantity $`\sqrt{G}L`$, instead of an $`intensive`$ quantity involving only $`\sqrt{G}`$.

For the case of superconductors, treating Cooper pairs of electrons as bosons, we would expect the above arguments would carry over with the charge $`e`$ replaced by $`2e`$ and the mass $`m`$ replaced by $`2m`$. For quantum fluids which possess an order parameter $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ obeying the Ginzburg-Landau equation, the above minimal-coupling rule suggests that this equation be generalized as follows:

$$\frac{1}{2m}\left(\frac{\mathrm{}}{i}𝐚𝐛\right)^2\mathrm{\Psi }+\beta |\mathrm{\Psi }|^2\mathrm{\Psi }=\alpha \mathrm{\Psi }\text{ ,}$$
(17)
where $`𝐛𝐍`$.

## VIII Quantum transducers between EM and GR waves?

Returning to the general problem of quantum fields embedded in curved spacetime, we recall that the ground state of a superconductor, which possesses spontaneous symmetry breaking, and therefore ODLRO, is very similar to that of the physical vacuum, which is believed also to possess spontanous symmetry breaking through the Higgs mechanism. In this sense, therefore, the vacuum is “superconducting.” The question thus arises: How does a ground or “vacuum” state of a superconductor, and other quantum fluids viewed as ground states of nonrelativistic quantum field theories with ODLRO, interact with dynamically changing spacetimes, e.g., a GR wave? We believe that this question needs both theoretical and experimental investigation.

In particular, motivated by the discussion in the previous section, we suspect that there might exist superconductors, viewed as quantum fluids, which are transducers between EM and GR waves based on the cross-coupling Hamiltonian $`H_{int}`$ $`𝐚𝐛`$. One possible geometry for an experiment is shown in Figure 4. An EM wave impinges on the quantum fluid, which converts it into a GR wave in process (a). In the time-reversed process (b), a GR wave impinges on the quantum fluid, which converts it back into an EM wave. It is an open question at this point as to what the conversion efficiency of such quantum transducers will be enhancement . This question is best settled by an experiment to measure this efficiency by means of a Hertz-type apparatus, in which process (a) is used for generating gravitational radiation, and process (b), inside a separate quantum transducer, is used to detect this radiation.

If the quantum transducer conversion efficiency turns out to be high, this will lead to an avenue of research which could be called “gravity radio.” I have performed a preliminary version of this Hertz-type experiment with Walt Fitelson using the high $`T_c`$ superconductor YBCO to measure its transducer efficiency at microwave frequencies. We have obtained an upper limit on the conversion efficiency for YBCO at liquid nitrogen temperature of $`1.6\times 10^5`$. Details of this experiment will be reported elsewhere Venice .

## IX Conclusions

The conceptual tensions between QM and GR, the two main fields of interest of John Archibald Wheeler, could indeed lead to important experimental consequences, much like the conceptual tensions of the past. I have covered here in detail only one of these conceptual tensions, namely, the tension between the concept of spatial nonseparability of physical systems due to the notion of nonlocality embedded in the superposition principle, in particular, in the entangled states of QM, and the concept of spatial separability of all physical systems due to the notion of locality embedded in the equivalence principle in GR. This has led to the idea of antennas and transducers using quantum fluids as potentially practical devices, which could possibly open up a door for further exciting discoveries CMB .

## X Acknowledgments

I dedicate this paper to my teacher, John Archibald Wheeler, whose vision helped inspire this paper. I am grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for the invitation to contribute to this Volume, and would like to thank my father-in-law, the late Yi-Fan Chiao, for his financial and moral support of this work. This work was supported also by the ONR.

## XI Figure Captions

1. Figure 1: Three intersecting circles in a Venn-like diagram represent the three main pillars of physics at the beginning of the 21st century. The top circle represents quantum mechanics, and is labeled by Planck’s constant $`\mathrm{}`$. The left circle represents relativity, and is labeled by the two constants $`c`$, the speed of light, and $`G`$, Newton’s constant. The right circle represents statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, and is labeled by Boltzmann’s constant $`k_B`$. Conceptual tensions exist at the intersections of these three circles, which may lead to fruitful experimental consequences.
2. Figure 2: Liquid drop placed at the center of a not-to-scale sketch of the Space Station, where it is subjected to the tidal force due to the Earth’s gravity. Is there any difference between the shape of a classical and a quantum liquid drop, for example, between a drop of water and one composed of superfluid helium?
3. Figure 3: Whispering gallery modes of a liquid drop arise in the correspondence principle limit, when an atom or a photon wave packet bounces at grazing incidence off the inner surface of the drop in multiple specular internal reflections, to form a closed polygonal trajectory. The Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization rule leads to a discrete set of such modes.
4. Figure 4: Quantum transducer between electromagnetic (EM) and gravitational (GR) radiation, consisting of a quantum fluid with charge and spin, such as the quantum Hall fluid. The minimal-coupling rule for an electron coupled to curved spacetime via its charge and spin, results in two processes. In process (a) an EM plane wave is converted upon reflection from the quantum fluid into a GR plane wave; in process (b), which is the reciprocal or time-reversed process, a GR plane wave is converted upon reflection from the quantum fluid into an EM plane wave. Transducer interconversion between these two kinds of waves may also occur upon $`transmission`$ through the quantum fluid, as well as upon $`reflection`$.