Equivalence principle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the theory of general relativity, the equivalence principle is any of several related concepts dealing with the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass, and to Albert Einstein's observation that the gravitational "force" as experienced locally while standing on a massive body (such as the Earth) is the same as the pseudo-force experienced by an observer in a non-inertial (accelerated) frame of reference.

Einstein's statement of the equality of inertial and gravitational mass

A little reflection will show that the law of the equality of the inertial and gravitational mass is equivalent to the assertion that the acceleration imparted to a body by a gravitational field is independent of the nature of the body. For Newton's equation of motion in a gravitational field, written out in full, it is:

(Inertial mass) ${\displaystyle \cdot }$ (Acceleration) ${\displaystyle =}$ (Intensity of the gravitational field) ${\displaystyle \cdot }$ (Gravitational mass).

It is only when there is numerical equality between the inertial and gravitational mass that the acceleration is independent of the nature of the body.^[1][2]

Development of gravitation theory

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During the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, astronaut David Scott showed that Galileo was right: acceleration is the same for all bodies subject to gravity on the Moon, even for a hammer and a feather.

Something like the equivalence principle emerged in the early 17th century, when Galileo expressed experimentally that the acceleration of a test mass due to gravitation is independent of the amount of mass being accelerated.

Kepler, using Galileo's discoveries, showed knowledge of the equivalence principle by accurately describing what would occur if the moon were stopped in its orbit and dropped towards Earth. This can be deduced without knowing if or in what manner gravity decreases with distance, but requires assuming the equivalency between gravity and inertia.

If two stones were placed in any part of the world near each other, and beyond the sphere of influence of a third cognate body, these stones, like two magnetic needles, would come together in the intermediate point, each approaching the other by a space proportional to the comparative mass of the other. If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would mount to the moon by a fifty-fourth part of their distance, and the moon fall towards the earth through the other fifty-three parts, and they would there meet, assuming, however, that the substance of both is of the same density.

— Kepler, "Astronomia Nova", 1609^[3]

The 1/54 ratio is Kepler's estimate of the Moon–Earth mass ratio, based on their diameters. The accuracy of his statement can be deduced by using Newton's inertia law F=ma and Galileo's gravitational observation that distance ${\displaystyle D=(1/2)at^{2}}$. Setting these accelerations equal for a mass is the equivalence principle. Noting the time to collision for each mass is the same gives Kepler's statement that D_moon/D_Earth=M_Earth/M_moon, without knowing the time to collision or how or if the acceleration force from gravity is a function of distance.

Newton's gravitational theory simplified and formalized Galileo's and Kepler's ideas by recognizing Kepler's "animal force or some other equivalent" beyond gravity and inertia were not needed, deducing from Kepler's planetary laws how gravity reduces with distance.

The equivalence principle was properly introduced by Albert Einstein in 1907, when he observed that the acceleration of bodies towards the center of the Earth at a rate of 1g (g = 9.81 m/s² being a standard reference of gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface) is equivalent to the acceleration of an inertially moving body that would be observed on a rocket in free space being accelerated at a rate of 1g. Einstein stated it thus:

we [...] assume the complete physical equivalence of a gravitational field and a corresponding acceleration of the reference system.

— Einstein, 1907

That is, being on the surface of the Earth is equivalent to being inside a spaceship (far from any sources of gravity) that is being accelerated by its engines. The direction or vector of acceleration equivalence on the surface of the earth is "up" or directly opposite the center of the planet while the vector of acceleration in a spaceship is directly opposite from the mass ejected by its thrusters. From this principle, Einstein deduced that free-fall is inertial motion. Objects in free-fall do not experience being accelerated downward (e.g. toward the earth or other massive body) but rather weightlessness and no acceleration. In an inertial frame of reference bodies (and photons, or light) obey Newton's first law, moving at constant velocity in straight lines. Analogously, in a curved spacetime the world line of an inertial particle or pulse of light is as straight as possible (in space and time).^[4] Such a world line is called a geodesic and from the point of view of the inertial frame is a straight line. This is why an accelerometer in free-fall doesn't register any acceleration; there isn't any.

As an example: an inertial body moving along a geodesic through space can be trapped into an orbit around a large gravitational mass without ever experiencing acceleration. This is possible because spacetime is radically curved in close vicinity to a large gravitational mass. In such a situation the geodesic lines bend inward around the center of the mass and a free-floating (weightless) inertial body will simply follow those curved geodesics into an elliptical orbit. An accelerometer on-board would never record any acceleration.

By contrast, in Newtonian mechanics, gravity is assumed to be a force. This force draws objects having mass towards the center of any massive body. At the Earth's surface, the force of gravity is counteracted by the mechanical (physical) resistance of the Earth's surface. So in Newtonian physics, a person at rest on the surface of a (non-rotating) massive object is in an inertial frame of reference. These considerations suggest the following corollary to the equivalence principle, which Einstein formulated precisely in 1911:

Whenever an observer detects the local presence of a force that acts on all objects in direct proportion to the inertial mass of each object, that observer is in an accelerated frame of reference.

Einstein also referred to two reference frames, K and K'. K is a uniform gravitational field, whereas K' has no gravitational field but is uniformly accelerated such that objects in the two frames experience identical forces:

We arrive at a very satisfactory interpretation of this law of experience, if we assume that the systems K and K' are physically exactly equivalent, that is, if we assume that we may just as well regard the system K as being in a space free from gravitational fields, if we then regard K as uniformly accelerated. This assumption of exact physical equivalence makes it impossible for us to speak of the absolute acceleration of the system of reference, just as the usual theory of relativity forbids us to talk of the absolute velocity of a system; and it makes the equal falling of all bodies in a gravitational field seem a matter of course.

— Einstein, 1911

This observation was the start of a process that culminated in general relativity. Einstein suggested that it should be elevated to the status of a general principle, which he called the "principle of equivalence" when constructing his theory of relativity:

As long as we restrict ourselves to purely mechanical processes in the realm where Newton's mechanics holds sway, we are certain of the equivalence of the systems K and K'. But this view of ours will not have any deeper significance unless the systems K and K' are equivalent with respect to all physical processes, that is, unless the laws of nature with respect to K are in entire agreement with those with respect to K'. By assuming this to be so, we arrive at a principle which, if it is really true, has great heuristic importance. For by theoretical consideration of processes which take place relatively to a system of reference with uniform acceleration, we obtain information as to the career of processes in a homogeneous gravitational field.

— Einstein, 1911

Einstein combined (postulated) the equivalence principle with special relativity to predict that clocks run at different rates in a gravitational potential, and light rays bend in a gravitational field, even before he developed the concept of curved spacetime.

So the original equivalence principle, as described by Einstein, concluded that free-fall and inertial motion were physically equivalent. This form of the equivalence principle can be stated as follows. An observer in a windowless room cannot distinguish between being on the surface of the Earth, and being in a spaceship in deep space accelerating at 1g. This is not strictly true, because massive bodies give rise to tidal effects (caused by variations in the strength and direction of the gravitational field) which are absent from an accelerating spaceship in deep space. The room, therefore, should be small enough that tidal effects can be neglected.

Although the equivalence principle guided the development of general relativity, it is not a founding principle of relativity but rather a simple consequence of the geometrical nature of the theory. In general relativity, objects in free-fall follow geodesics of spacetime, and what we perceive as the force of gravity is instead a result of our being unable to follow those geodesics of spacetime, because the mechanical resistance of matter prevents us from doing so.

Since Einstein developed general relativity, there was a need to develop a framework to test the theory against other possible theories of gravity compatible with special relativity. This was developed by Robert Dicke as part of his program to test general relativity. Two new principles were suggested, the so-called Einstein equivalence principle and the strong equivalence principle, each of which assumes the weak equivalence principle as a starting point. They only differ in whether or not they apply to gravitational experiments.

Another clarification needed is that the equivalence principle assumes a constant acceleration of 1g without considering the mechanics of generating 1g. If we do consider the mechanics of it, then we must assume the aforementioned windowless room has a fixed mass. Accelerating it at 1g means there is a constant force being applied, which = m*g where m is the mass of the windowless room along with its contents (including the observer). Now, if the observer jumps inside the room, an object lying freely on the floor will decrease in weight momentarily because the acceleration is going to decrease momentarily due to the observer pushing back against the floor in order to jump. The object will then gain weight while the observer is in the air and the resulting decreased mass of the windowless room allows greater acceleration; it will lose weight again when the observer lands and pushes once more against the floor; and it will finally return to its initial weight afterwards. To make all these effects equal those we would measure on a planet producing 1g, the windowless room must be assumed to have the same mass as that planet. Additionally, the windowless room must not cause its own gravity, otherwise the scenario changes even further. These are technicalities, clearly, but practical ones if we wish the experiment to demonstrate more or less precisely the equivalence of 1g gravity and 1g acceleration.

Modern usage

Three forms of the equivalence principle are in current use: weak (Galilean), Einsteinian, and strong.

The weak equivalence principle

The weak equivalence principle, also known as the universality of free fall or the Galilean equivalence principle can be stated in many ways. The strong EP includes (astronomic) bodies with gravitational binding energy^[5] (e.g., 1.74 solar-mass pulsar PSR J1903+0327, 15.3% of whose separated mass is absent as gravitational binding energy^[6]). The weak EP assumes falling bodies are bound by non-gravitational forces only. Either way:

The trajectory of a point mass in a gravitational field depends only on its initial position and velocity, and is independent of its composition and structure.

All test particles at the alike spacetime point, in a given gravitational field, will undergo the same acceleration, independent of their properties, including their rest mass.^[7]

All local centers of mass free-fall (in vacuum) along identical (parallel-displaced, same speed) minimum action trajectories independent of all observable properties.

The vacuum world-line of a body immersed in a gravitational field is independent of all observable properties.

The local effects of motion in a curved spacetime (gravitation) are indistinguishable from those of an accelerated observer in flat spacetime, without exception.

Mass (measured with a balance) and weight (measured with a scale) are locally in identical ratio for all bodies (the opening page to Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1687).

Locality eliminates measurable tidal forces originating from a radial divergent gravitational field (e.g., the Earth) upon finite sized physical bodies. The "falling" equivalence principle embraces Galileo's, Newton's, and Einstein's conceptualization. The equivalence principle does not deny the existence of measurable effects caused by a rotating gravitating mass (frame dragging), or bear on the measurements of light deflection and gravitational time delay made by non-local observers.

Active, passive, and inertial masses

By definition of active and passive gravitational mass, the force on ${\displaystyle M_{1}}$ due to the gravitational field of ${\displaystyle M_{0}}$ is:

${\displaystyle F_{1}={\frac {M_{0}^{\mathrm {act} }M_{1}^{\mathrm {pass} }}{r^{2}}}}$

Likewise the force on a second object of arbitrary mass₂ due to the gravitational field of mass₀ is:

${\displaystyle F_{2}={\frac {M_{0}^{\mathrm {act} }M_{2}^{\mathrm {pass} }}{r^{2}}}}$

By definition of inertial mass:

${\displaystyle F=m^{\mathrm {inert} }a}$

If ${\displaystyle m_{1}}$ and ${\displaystyle m_{2}}$ are the same distance ${\displaystyle r}$ from ${\displaystyle m_{0}}$ then, by the weak equivalence principle, they fall at the same rate (i.e. their accelerations are the same)

${\displaystyle a_{1}={\frac {F_{1}}{m_{1}^{\mathrm {inert} }}}=a_{2}={\frac {F_{2}}{m_{2}^{\mathrm {inert} }}}}$

Hence:

${\displaystyle {\frac {M_{0}^{\mathrm {act} }M_{1}^{\mathrm {pass} }}{r^{2}m_{1}^{\mathrm {inert} }}}={\frac {M_{0}^{\mathrm {act} }M_{2}^{\mathrm {pass} }}{r^{2}m_{2}^{\mathrm {inert} }}}}$

Therefore:

${\displaystyle {\frac {M_{1}^{\mathrm {pass} }}{m_{1}^{\mathrm {inert} }}}={\frac {M_{2}^{\mathrm {pass} }}{m_{2}^{\mathrm {inert} }}}}$

In other words, passive gravitational mass must be proportional to inertial mass for all objects.

Furthermore, by Newton's third law of motion:

${\displaystyle F_{1}={\frac {M_{0}^{\mathrm {act} }M_{1}^{\mathrm {pass} }}{r^{2}}}}$

must be equal and opposite to

${\displaystyle F_{0}={\frac {M_{1}^{\mathrm {act} }M_{0}^{\mathrm {pass} }}{r^{2}}}}$

It follows that:

${\displaystyle {\frac {M_{0}^{\mathrm {act} }}{M_{0}^{\mathrm {pass} }}}={\frac {M_{1}^{\mathrm {act} }}{M_{1}^{\mathrm {pass} }}}}$

In other words, passive gravitational mass must be proportional to active gravitational mass for all objects.

The dimensionless Eötvös-parameter ${\displaystyle \eta (A,B)}$ is the difference of the ratios of gravitational and inertial masses divided by their average for the two sets of test masses "A" and "B."

${\displaystyle \eta (A,B)=2{\frac {\left({\frac {m_{g}}{m_{i}}}\right)_{A}-\left({\frac {m_{g}}{m_{i}}}\right)_{B}}{\left({\frac {m_{g}}{m_{i}}}\right)_{A}+\left({\frac {m_{g}}{m_{i}}}\right)_{B}}}}$

Tests of the weak equivalence principle

Tests of the weak equivalence principle are those that verify the equivalence of gravitational mass and inertial mass. An obvious test is dropping different objects, ideally in a vacuum environment, e.g., inside the Fallturm Bremen drop tower.

Researcher	Year	Method	Result
John Philoponus	6th century	Said that by observation, two balls of very different weights will fall at nearly the same speed	no detectable difference
Simon Stevin[8]	~1586	Dropped lead balls of different masses off the Delft churchtower	no detectable difference
Galileo Galilei	~1610	Rolling balls of varying weight down inclined planes to slow the speed so that it was measurable	no detectable difference
Isaac Newton	~1680	Measure the period of pendulums of different mass but identical length	difference is less than 1 part in 103
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel	1832	Measure the period of pendulums of different mass but identical length	no measurable difference
Loránd Eötvös	1908	Measure the torsion on a wire, suspending a balance beam, between two nearly identical masses under the acceleration of gravity and the rotation of the Earth	difference is 10±2 part in 109 (H2O/Cu)[9]
Roll, Krotkov and Dicke	1964	Torsion balance experiment, dropping aluminum and gold test masses	${\displaystyle |\eta (\mathrm {Al} ,\mathrm {Au} )|=(1.3\pm 1.0)\times 10^{-11}}$[10]
David Scott	1971	Dropped a falcon feather and a hammer at the same time on the Moon	no detectable difference (not a rigorous experiment, but very dramatic being the first lunar one[11])
Braginsky and Panov	1971	Torsion balance, aluminum and platinum test masses, measuring acceleration towards the Sun	difference is less than 1 part in 1012
Eöt-Wash group	1987–	Torsion balance, measuring acceleration of different masses towards the Earth, Sun and galactic center, using several different kinds of masses	${\displaystyle \eta ({\text{Earth}},{\text{Be-Ti}})=(0.3\pm 1.8)\times 10^{-13}}$[12]

See:^[13]

Year	Investigator	Sensitivity	Method
500?	Philoponus[14]	"small"	Drop Tower
1585	Stevin[15]	5×10−2	Drop Tower
1590?	Galileo[16]	2×10−2	Pendulum, Drop Tower
1686	Newton[17]	10−3	Pendulum
1832	Bessel[18]	2×10−5	Pendulum
1908 (1922)	Eötvös[19]	2×10−9	Torsion Balance
1910	Southerns[20]	5×10−6	Pendulum
1918	Zeeman[21]	3×10−8	Torsion Balance
1923	Potter[22]	3×10−6	Pendulum
1935	Renner[23]	2×10−9	Torsion Balance
1964	Dicke, Roll, Krotkov[10]	3x10−11	Torsion Balance
1972	Braginsky, Panov[24]	10−12	Torsion Balance
1976	Shapiro, et al.[25]	10−12	Lunar Laser Ranging
1981	Keiser, Faller[26]	4×10−11	Fluid Support
1987	Niebauer, et al.[27]	10−10	Drop Tower
1989	Stubbs, et al.[28]	10−11	Torsion Balance
1990	Adelberger, Eric G.; et al.[29]	10−12	Torsion Balance
1999	Baessler, et al.[30]	5x10−14	Torsion Balance
cancelled?	MiniSTEP	10−17	Earth Orbit
2016	MICROSCOPE	10−16	Earth Orbit
2015?	Reasenberg/SR-POEM[31]	2×10−17	vacuum free fall

Experiments are still being performed at the University of Washington which have placed limits on the differential acceleration of objects towards the Earth, the Sun and towards dark matter in the galactic center. Future satellite experiments^[32] – STEP (Satellite Test of the Equivalence Principle), Galileo Galilei, and MICROSCOPE (MICROSatellite à traînée Compensée pour l'Observation du Principe d'Équivalence) – will test the weak equivalence principle in space, to much higher accuracy.

With the first successful production of antimatter, in particular anti-hydrogen, a new approach to test the weak equivalence principle has been proposed. Experiments to compare the gravitational behavior of matter and antimatter are currently being developed.^[33]

Proposals that may lead to a quantum theory of gravity such as string theory and loop quantum gravity predict violations of the weak equivalence principle because they contain many light scalar fields with long Compton wavelengths, which should generate fifth forces and variation of the fundamental constants. Heuristic arguments suggest that the magnitude of these equivalence principle violations could be in the 10⁻¹³ to 10⁻¹⁸ range.^[34] Currently envisioned tests of the weak equivalence principle are approaching a degree of sensitivity such that non-discovery of a violation would be just as profound a result as discovery of a violation. Non-discovery of equivalence principle violation in this range would suggest that gravity is so fundamentally different from other forces as to require a major reevaluation of current attempts to unify gravity with the other forces of nature. A positive detection, on the other hand, would provide a major guidepost towards unification.^[34]

The Einstein equivalence principle

What is now called the "Einstein equivalence principle" states that the weak equivalence principle holds, and that:^[35]

The outcome of any local non-gravitational experiment in a freely falling laboratory is independent of the velocity of the laboratory and its location in spacetime.

Here "local" has a very special meaning: not only must the experiment not look outside the laboratory, but it must also be small compared to variations in the gravitational field, tidal forces, so that the entire laboratory is freely falling. It also implies the absence of interactions with "external" fields other than the gravitational field.^{[citation needed]}

The principle of relativity implies that the outcome of local experiments must be independent of the velocity of the apparatus, so the most important consequence of this principle is the Copernican idea that dimensionless physical values such as the fine-structure constant and electron-to-proton mass ratio must not depend on where in space or time we measure them. Many physicists believe that any Lorentz invariant theory that satisfies the weak equivalence principle also satisfies the Einstein equivalence principle.

Schiff's conjecture suggests that the weak equivalence principle implies the Einstein equivalence principle, but it has not been proven. Nonetheless, the two principles are tested with very different kinds of experiments. The Einstein equivalence principle has been criticized as imprecise, because there is no universally accepted way to distinguish gravitational from non-gravitational experiments (see for instance Hadley^[36] and Durand^[37]).

Tests of the Einstein equivalence principle

In addition to the tests of the weak equivalence principle, the Einstein equivalence principle can be tested by searching for variation of dimensionless constants and mass ratios. The present best limits on the variation of the fundamental constants have mainly been set by studying the naturally occurring Oklo natural nuclear fission reactor, where nuclear reactions similar to ones we observe today have been shown to have occurred underground approximately two billion years ago. These reactions are extremely sensitive to the values of the fundamental constants.

Constant	Year	Method	Limit on fractional change
proton gyromagnetic factor	1976	astrophysical	10−1
weak interaction constant	1976	Oklo	10−2
fine structure constant	1976	Oklo	10−7
electron–proton mass ratio	2002	quasars	10−4

There have been a number of controversial attempts to constrain the variation of the strong interaction constant. There have been several suggestions that "constants" do vary on cosmological scales. The best known is the reported detection of variation (at the 10⁻⁵ level) of the fine-structure constant from measurements of distant quasars, see Webb et al.^[38] Other researchers dispute these findings. Other tests of the Einstein equivalence principle are gravitational redshift experiments, such as the Pound–Rebka experiment which test the position independence of experiments.

The strong equivalence principle

The strong equivalence principle suggests the laws of gravitation are independent of velocity and location. In particular,

The gravitational motion of a small test body depends only on its initial position in spacetime and velocity, and not on its constitution.

and

The outcome of any local experiment (gravitational or not) in a freely falling laboratory is independent of the velocity of the laboratory and its location in spacetime.

The first part is a version of the weak equivalence principle that applies to objects that exert a gravitational force on themselves, such as stars, planets, black holes or Cavendish experiments. The second part is the Einstein equivalence principle (with the same definition of "local"), restated to allow gravitational experiments and self-gravitating bodies. The freely-falling object or laboratory, however, must still be small, so that tidal forces may be neglected (hence "local experiment").

This is the only form of the equivalence principle that applies to self-gravitating objects (such as stars), which have substantial internal gravitational interactions. It requires that the gravitational constant be the same everywhere in the universe and is incompatible with a fifth force. It is much more restrictive than the Einstein equivalence principle.

The strong equivalence principle suggests that gravity is entirely geometrical by nature (that is, the metric alone determines the effect of gravity) and does not have any extra fields associated with it. If an observer measures a patch of space to be flat, then the strong equivalence principle suggests that it is absolutely equivalent to any other patch of flat space elsewhere in the universe. Einstein's theory of general relativity (including the cosmological constant) is thought to be the only theory of gravity that satisfies the strong equivalence principle. A number of alternative theories, such as Brans–Dicke theory, satisfy only the Einstein equivalence principle.

Tests of the strong equivalence principle

The strong equivalence principle can be tested by searching for a variation of Newton's gravitational constant G over the life of the universe, or equivalently, variation in the masses of the fundamental particles. A number of independent constraints, from orbits in the solar system and studies of big bang nucleosynthesis have shown that G cannot have varied by more than 10%.

Thus, the strong equivalence principle can be tested by searching for fifth forces (deviations from the gravitational force-law predicted by general relativity). These experiments typically look for failures of the inverse-square law (specifically Yukawa forces or failures of Birkhoff's theorem) behavior of gravity in the laboratory. The most accurate tests over short distances have been performed by the Eöt-Wash group. A future satellite experiment, SEE (Satellite Energy Exchange), will search for fifth forces in space and should be able to further constrain violations of the strong equivalence principle. Other limits, looking for much longer-range forces, have been placed by searching for the Nordtvedt effect, a "polarization" of solar system orbits that would be caused by gravitational self-energy accelerating at a different rate from normal matter. This effect has been sensitively tested by the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment. Other tests include studying the deflection of radiation from distant radio sources by the sun, which can be accurately measured by very long baseline interferometry. Another sensitive test comes from measurements of the frequency shift of signals to and from the Cassini spacecraft. Together, these measurements have put tight limits on Brans–Dicke theory and other alternative theories of gravity.

In 2014, astronomers discovered a stellar triple system including a millisecond pulsar PSR J0337+1715 and two white dwarfs orbiting it. The system will provide them a chance to test the strong equivalence principle in a strong gravitational field.^[39]

Challenges

One challenge to the equivalence principle is the Brans–Dicke theory. Self-creation cosmology is a modification of the Brans–Dicke theory. The Fredkin Finite Nature Hypothesis is an even more radical challenge to the equivalence principle and has even fewer supporters.

In August 2010, researchers from the University of New South Wales, Swinburne University of Technology, and Cambridge University published a paper titled "Evidence for spatial variation of the fine structure constant", whose tentative conclusion is that, "qualitatively, [the] results suggest a violation of the Einstein Equivalence Principle, and could infer a very large or infinite universe, within which our 'local' Hubble volume represents a tiny fraction."^[40]

In his book Einstein's Mistakes, pages 226-227, Hans C. Ohanian describes several situations which falsify Einstein's Equivalence Principle. Inertial accelerative effects are analogous to, but not equivalent to, gravitational effects. Ohanian cites Ehrenfest for this same opinion.

Explanations

Dutch physicist and string theorist Erik Verlinde has generated a self-contained, logical derivation of the equivalence principle based on the starting assumption of a holographic universe. Given this situation, gravity would not be a true fundamental force as is currently thought but instead an "emergent property" related to entropy. Verlinde's entropic gravity theory apparently leads naturally to the correct observed strength of dark energy; previous failures to explain its incredibly small magnitude have been called by such people as cosmologist Michael Turner (who is credited as having coined the term "dark energy") as "the greatest embarrassment in the history of theoretical physics".^[41] However, it should be noted that these ideas are far from settled and still very controversial.

Experiments

• University of Washington^[42]
• Lunar Laser Ranging^[43]
• Galileo-Galilei satellite experiment^[44]
• Satellite Test of the Equivalence Principle (STEP)^[45]
• MICROSCOPE^[46]
• Satellite Energy Exchange (SEE)^[47]
• "...Physicists in Germany have used an atomic interferometer to perform the most accurate ever test of the equivalence principle at the level of atoms..."^[48]

Black hole information paradox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Artist's representation of a black hole

The black hole information paradox^[1] is a puzzle resulting from the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity. Calculations suggest that physical information could permanently disappear in a black hole, allowing many physical states to devolve into the same state. This is controversial because it violates a core precept of modern physics—that in principle the value of a wave function of a physical system at one point in time should determine its value at any other time.^[2][3] A fundamental postulate of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is that complete information about a system is encoded in its wave function up to when the wave function collapses. The evolution of the wave function is determined by a unitary operator, and unitarity implies that information is conserved in the quantum sense.

Relevant principles

There are two main principles in play:^{[citation needed]}

• Quantum determinism means that given a present wave function, its future changes are uniquely determined by the evolution operator.
• Reversibility refers to the fact that the evolution operator has an inverse, meaning that the past wave functions are similarly unique.

The combination of the two means that information must always be preserved.

Starting in the mid-1970s, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein put forward theoretical arguments based on general relativity and quantum field theory that not only appeared to be inconsistent with information conservation but were not accounting for the information loss and state no reason for it. Specifically, Hawking's calculations^[4] indicated that black hole evaporation via Hawking radiation does not preserve information. Today, many physicists believe that the holographic principle (specifically the AdS/CFT duality) demonstrates that Hawking's conclusion was incorrect, and that information is in fact preserved.^[5] In 2004 Hawking himself conceded a bet he had made, agreeing that black hole evaporation does in fact preserve information.

Hawking radiation

The Penrose diagram of a black hole which forms, and then completely evaporates away. Information falling into it will hit the singularity.^{[clarification needed]} Time shown on vertical axis from bottom to top; space shown on horizontal axis from left (radius zero) to right (growing radius).

In 1973–75, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein showed that black holes should slowly radiate away energy, which poses a problem. From the no-hair theorem, one would expect the Hawking radiation to be completely independent of the material entering the black hole. Nevertheless, if the material entering the black hole were a pure quantum state, the transformation of that state into the mixed state of Hawking radiation would destroy information about the original quantum state. This violates Liouville's theorem and presents a physical paradox.^{[citation needed]}

More precisely, if there is an entangled pure state, and one part of the entangled system is thrown into the black hole while keeping the other part outside, the result is a mixed state after the partial trace is taken into the interior of the black hole. But since everything within the interior of the black hole will hit the singularity within a finite time, the part which is traced over partially might disappear completely from the physical system.^{[citation needed]}

Hawking remained convinced that the equations of black-hole thermodynamics together with the no-hair theorem led to the conclusion that quantum information may be destroyed. This annoyed many physicists, notably John Preskill, who bet Hawking and Kip Thorne in 1997 that information was not lost in black holes. The implications that Hawking had opened led to a "battle" where Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft publicly 'declared war' on Hawking's solution, with Susskind publishing a popular book, The Black Hole War, about the debate in 2008. (The book carefully notes that the 'war' was purely a scientific one, and that at a personal level, the participants remained friends.^[6]) The solution to the problem that concluded the battle is the holographic principle, which was first proposed by 't Hooft but was given a precise string theory interpretation by Susskind. With this, "Susskind quashes Hawking in quarrel over quantum quandary".^[7]

There are various ideas about how the paradox is solved. Since the 1997 proposal of the AdS/CFT correspondence, the predominant belief among physicists is that information is preserved and that Hawking radiation is not precisely thermal but receives quantum corrections.^{[clarification needed]} Other possibilities include the information being contained in a Planckian remnant left over at the end of Hawking radiation or a modification of the laws of quantum mechanics to allow for non-unitary time evolution.^{[citation needed]}

In July 2004, Stephen Hawking published a paper presenting a theory that quantum perturbations of the event horizon could allow information to escape from a black hole, which would resolve the information paradox.^[8] His argument assumes the unitarity of the AdS/CFT correspondence which implies that an AdS black hole that is dual to a thermal conformal field theory. When announcing his result, Hawking also conceded the 1997 bet, paying Preskill with a baseball encyclopedia "from which information can be retrieved at will."^{[citation needed]}

According to Roger Penrose, loss of unitarity in quantum systems is not a problem: quantum measurements are by themselves already non-unitary. Penrose claims that quantum systems will in fact no longer evolve unitarily as soon as gravitation comes into play, precisely as in black holes. The Conformal Cyclic Cosmology advocated by Penrose critically depends on the condition that information is in fact lost in black holes. This new cosmological model might in future be tested experimentally by detailed analysis of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB): if true the CMB should exhibit circular patterns with slightly lower or slightly higher temperatures. In November 2010, Penrose and V. G. Gurzadyan announced they had found evidence of such circular patterns, in data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) corroborated by data from the BOOMERanG experiment.^[9] The significance of the findings was subsequently debated by others.^{[clarification needed]}

Postulated solutions

• Information is irretrievably lost^[10][11]

  Advantage: Seems to be a direct consequence of relatively non-controversial calculation based on semiclassical gravity.

  Disadvantage: Violates unitarity. (Banks, Susskind and Peskin argued that it also violates energy-momentum conservation or locality, but the argument does not seem to be correct for systems with a large number of degrees of freedom.^[12])

• Information gradually leaks out during the black-hole evaporation^[10][11]

  Advantage: Intuitively appealing because it qualitatively resembles information recovery in a classical process of burning.

  Disadvantage: Requires a large deviation from classical and semiclassical gravity (which do not allow information to leak out from the black hole) even for macroscopic black holes for which classical and semiclassical approximations are expected to be good approximations.

• Information suddenly escapes out during the final stage of black-hole evaporation^[10][11]

  Advantage: A significant deviation from classical and semiclassical gravity is needed only in the regime in which the effects of quantum gravity are expected to dominate.

  Disadvantage: Just before the sudden escape of information, a very small black hole must be able to store an arbitrary amount of information, which violates the Bekenstein bound.

• Information is stored in a Planck-sized remnant^[10][11]

  Advantage: No mechanism for information escape is needed.

  Disadvantage: To contain the information from any evaporated black hole, the remnants would need to have an infinite number of internal states. It has been argued that it would be possible to produce an infinite amount of pairs of these remnants since they are small and indistinguishable from the perspective of the low-energy effective theory.^[13]

• Information is stored in a large remnant^[14][15]

  Advantage: The size of remnant increases with the size of the initial black hole, so there is no need for an infinite number of internal states.

  Disadvantage: Hawking radiation must stop before the black hole reaches the Planck size, which requires a violation of semi-classical gravity at a macroscopic scale.

• Information is stored in a baby universe that separates from our own universe.^[11][16]

  Advantage: This scenario is predicted by the Einstein–Cartan theory of gravity which extends general relativity to matter with intrinsic angular momentum (spin). No violation of known general principles of physics is needed.

  Disadvantage: It is difficult to test the Einstein–Cartan theory because its predictions are significantly different from general-relativistic ones only at extremely high densities.

• Information is encoded in the correlations between future and past^[17][18]

  Advantage: Semiclassical gravity is sufficient, i.e., the solution does not depend on details of (still not well understood) quantum gravity.

  Disadvantage: Contradicts the intuitive view of nature as an entity that evolves with time.

Recent developments

In 2014, Chris Adami argued that analysis using quantum channel theory causes any apparent paradox to disappear; Adami rejects Susskind's analysis of black hole complementarity, arguing instead that no space-like surface contains duplicated quantum information.^[19][20]

In 2015, Modak, Ortíz, Peña and Sudarsky, have argued that the paradox can be dissolved by invoking foundational issues of quantum theory often referred as the measurement problem of quantum mechanics.^[21] This work was built on an earlier proposal by Okon and Sudarsky on the benefits of objective collapse theory in a much broader context.^[22] The original motivation of these studies was the long lasting proposal of Roger Penrose where collapse of the wave-function is said to be inevitable in presence of black holes (and even under the influence of gravitational field).^[23][24] Experimental verification of collapse theories is an ongoing effort.^[25]

In 2016, Hawking et al. proposed new theories of information moving in and out of a black hole.^[26][27] The 2016 work posits that the information is saved in "soft particles", low-energy versions of photons and other particles that exist in zero-energy empty space.^[28]