General Formalism of the Quantum Equivalence Principle

TL;DR

This paper develops a fully relativistic quantum equivalence principle applicable to all space-times and particle types, exploring its implications and potential violations for quantum gravity theories.

Contribution

It generalizes the quantum equivalence principle to a relativistic framework, including massive particles and diverse space-times, and discusses observable consequences of its possible violations.

Findings

Quantum equivalence principle extended to relativistic particles.

Violation implies modifications to Lorentz transformations.

Potential observable effects in quantum gravity experiments.

Abstract

A consistent theory of quantum gravity will require a fully quantum formulation of the classical equivalence principle. Such a formulation has been recently proposed in terms of the equality of the rest, inertial and gravitational mass operators, and for non-relativistic particles in a weak gravitational field. In this work, we propose a generalization to a fully relativistic formalism of the quantum equivalence principle, valid for all background space-times, as well as for massive bosons and fermions. The principle is trivially satisfied for massless particles. We show that if the equivalence principle is broken at the quantum level, it implies the modification of the standard Lorentz transformations in flat space-time and a corresponding modification of the metric in curved space-time by the different mass ratios. In other words, the observed geometry would effectively depend on the properties of the test particle. Testable predictions of potential violations of the quantum equivalence principle are proposed.