Interactions between Multipolar Nuclear Transitions and Gravitational Waves

TL;DR

This paper explores the theoretical interaction between gravitational waves and nuclear transitions, proposing novel detection methods using long-lived Moessbauer nuclides and analyzing the effects of GWs on nuclear shape and spin.

Contribution

It introduces two nonclassical GW detection scenarios and demonstrates the potential of nuclear transducers for low-frequency GW detection.

Findings

GWs induce nuclear quadrupole deformation similar to Stark effect.

GWs can flip nuclear spins via resonant helicity-rotation coupling.

High-energy states in heavy nuclides may enhance multipolar transitions for GW detection.

Abstract

Interactions between multipolar nuclear transitions and gravitational waves (GWs) are theoretically investigated. Two nonclassical scenarios of the GW detection are suggested. We demonstrate in this report that the long-lived Moessbauer nuclides of multipolar transitions are suitable transducers to detect the impinging GWs. Shape deformation and spin flip of nucleus are derived from the Hamiltonian with gravity interaction. The GWs generate a nuclear quadrupole deformation in analogy with the Stark effect, of which the electric field generates the dipole deformation of electron orbits. Likewise in analogy with the nuclear magnetic resonance that the rotating radio-frequency field flips the nuclear spin, the GWs flip the nuclear spin by the resonant helicity-rotation-gravity coupling. The high energy states of the quadrupole deformation in heavy nuclides can dramatically speed up the multipolar transitions, which may be important for the GW detection particularly in the low frequency band, ranging from 100 nHz to 1 Hz.