Gravitational influence of high power laser pulses

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of using ultra-high power laser pulses to generate measurable metric perturbations in spacetime, aiming to facilitate laboratory detection of gravitational waves.

Contribution

It proposes a novel method to generate and study gravitational effects using high power lasers, offering advantages over traditional mass acceleration techniques.

Findings

Laser-induced metric perturbations are theoretically possible.

Scaling laser experiments could make gravitational wave detection more feasible.

Laser-based methods may reduce noise compared to mechanical approaches.

Abstract

The study of the generation of metric perturbation in the laboratory presents an opportunity to observe and understand more easily the mechanisms at work in gravitation. The present study will focus on the metric perturbation generated by a light pulse, as it could be generated by a current ultra-high power laser. Although of very small magnitude, the potential thus generated has advantages over that generated by mass acceleration, such as the absence of noise due to non uniform acceleration or the ability to scale up the experiment. It is indeed easier to scale up an electromagnetic oscillation compared to a mechanical oscillator, which must either be made with a large accelerated mass or a lot of small masses, all in sync, which acceleration must furthermore be quadripolar. Generation of metric deformation by laser could therefore prove useful in the long-term establishment of a laboratory experiment for the generation and detection of gravitational waves.