Spinning particle in an external linearized gravitational wave field

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how scalar and spinning particles interact with a classical linearized gravitational wave, deriving explicit solutions and showing the dominance of semiclassical effects in the interaction.

Contribution

It provides explicit eigenfunctions and Green's functions for particles in a linearized gravitational wave, advancing understanding of particle-wave interactions in gravity.

Findings

Explicit eigenfunctions derived for scalar and spinning particles.

Green's functions formulated for the particle-wave system.

Interaction results are fully determined by semiclassical contributions.

Abstract

We study the interaction of a scalar and a spinning particle with a coherent linearized gravitational wave field treated as a classical spin two external field. The spin degrees of freedom of the spinning particle are described by skew-commuting variables. We derive the explicit expressions for the eigenfunctions and the Green's functions of the theory. The discussion is exact within the approximation of neglecting radiative corrections and we prove that the result is completely determined by the semiclassical contribution.