American physicists have developed a new type of atomic interferometer, which is sensitive enough to study the manifestations of gravity at the quantum level.
They also tracked the possible influence of dark energy on visible matter, according to a statement published by the press service of the University of California, Berkeley.
"Most theorists assume that the gravitational force is quantum in nature," said Holger Müller, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "So far, no one has been able to confirm this experimentally. If we can increase the operating time of atomic interferometers by 20-30 times, our chances of discovering the Evidence of the quantum nature of gravity by 400-800 thousand times.”
To solve this problem, scientists have developed a new type of atom interferometer, which are measuring devices that use the quantum properties of individual atoms to measure very precisely how the position of these particles in space changes under the influence of various forces, including the force of gravity.
Scientists have improved the operation of an optical trap so that an atom hidden inside it does not leave the device for several seconds, which is much more than the several tens of milliseconds during which scientists were previously able to monitor the interactions of cesium atoms with the force of gravity. At the same time, physicists were able to divide the position of the quantum halves of the atom into several microns, which allowed them for the first time to track the possible interactions of these particles with the so-called "chameleon", as a form of dark energy, as precisely as possible.
The measurements made by scientists have almost completely ruled out the possibility of the existence of "chameleon" particles in a form that allows their existence through the known quantum properties of the universe. Scientists hope that subsequent experiments using the atom interferometer will help to study the manifestations of gravity on the quantum level for the first time, as well as to measure Newton's gravitational constant with the greatest possible accuracy.