Hydrogen atom in the gravitational fields of topological defects

TL;DR

This paper studies how the presence of cosmic strings and global monopoles, as topological defects in spacetime, affect the energy levels of a hydrogen atom by solving the Dirac equation in these backgrounds.

Contribution

It provides new solutions to the Dirac equation in the spacetimes of cosmic strings and monopoles and analyzes the resulting energy level shifts.

Findings

Energy levels are shifted due to topological defects.

The geometric features cause measurable quantum effects.

Results differ from flat spacetime predictions.

Abstract

We consider a hydrogen atom in the background spacetimes generated by an infinitely thin cosmic string and by a point-like global monopole. In both cases, we find the solutions of the corresponding Dirac equations and we determine the energy levels of the atom. We investigate how the geometric and topological features of these spacetimes leads to shifts in the energy levels as compared with the flat Minkowski spacetime.