Entanglement of quantum clocks through gravity.

ABSTRACT: In general relativity, the picture of space-time assigns an ideal clock to each world line. Being ideal, gravitational effects due to these clocks are ignored and the flow of time according to one clock is not affected by the presence of clocks along nearby world lines. However, if time is defined operationally, as a pointer position of a physical clock that obeys the principles of general relativity and quantum mechanics, such a picture is, at most, a convenient fiction. Specifically, we show that the general relativistic mass-energy equivalence implies gravitational interaction between the clocks, whereas the quantum mechanical superposition of energy eigenstates leads to a nonfixed metric background. Based only on the assumption that both principles hold in this situation, we show that

SUBMITTER: Castro Ruiz E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5373405 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature