1. Interferometric Constraints on Spacelike Coherent Rotational Fluctuations
- Author
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Richardson, Jonathan W., Kwon, Ohkyung, Gustafson, H. Richard, Hogan, Craig, Kamai, Brittany L., McCuller, Lee P., Meyer, Stephan S., Stoughton, Chris, Tomlin, Raymond E., and Weiss, Rainer
- Subjects
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology ,High Energy Physics - Experiment ,Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors - Abstract
Precision measurements are reported of the cross-spectrum of rotationally-induced differential position displacements in a pair of colocated 39 m long, high power Michelson interferometers. One arm of each interferometer is bent $90^{\circ}$ near its midpoint to obtain sensitivity to rotations about an axis normal to the plane of the instrument. The instrument achieves quantum-limited sensing of spatially-correlated signals in a broad frequency band extending beyond the 3.9 MHz inverse light travel time of the apparatus. For stationary signals with bandwidth $\Delta f > 10\;\mathrm{kHz}$, the sensitivity to rotation-induced strain $h$ of classical or exotic origin surpasses $\mathrm{CSD}_{\delta h} < t_P / 2$, where $t_P = 5.39 \times 10^{-44}\;\mathrm{s}$ is the Planck time. This measurement is used to constrain a semiclassical model of nonlocally coherent rotational degrees of freedom of spacetime, which have been conjectured to emerge in holographic quantum geometry but are not present in a classical metric., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. PRL accepted manuscript
- Published
- 2020
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