Quantum Mechanics of Gravitational Waves

TL;DR

This paper explores the quantum nature of gravity, predicting measurable noise in gravitational experiments that could confirm gravity's quantization and provide insights into its sources.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum field treatment of gravity and derives a stochastic equation for particle separation, highlighting potential experimental signatures of quantum gravitational effects.

Findings

Gravity exhibits quantum-induced noise affecting falling bodies.

Derived a stochastic equation describing particle separation under quantum gravity.

Quantum gravitational noise may be detectable with current gravitational wave detectors.

Abstract

For the purpose of analyzing observed phenomena, it has been convenient, and thus far sufficient, to regard gravity as subject to the deterministic principles of classical physics, with the gravitational field obeying Newton's law or Einstein's equations. Here we treat the gravitational field as a quantum field and determine the implications of such treatment for experimental observables. We find that falling bodies in gravity are subject to random fluctuations ("noise") whose characteristics depend on the quantum state of the gravitational field. We derive a stochastic equation for the separation of two falling particles. Detection of this fundamental noise, which may be measurable at gravitational wave detectors, would vindicate the quantization of gravity, and reveal important properties of its sources.