Gravitational physics

Interplay of optical dispersion and gravitational redshift

In 2000, SM and graduate student Eric Page evaluated the possibility of using the interplay of the gravitationally-induced frequency shift and dispersion in optical fibers to develop a high precision experiment to measure the gravitational redshift of light. Some of our ideas have been published in Physical Review.  See Phys. Rev. D63 (2001) 062003 or you can pull a PDF file from our server.

In the end, we determined that such an experiment was possible and with substantial R&D it might yield a measurement of the gravitaitonal redshift with a precision comparable to what is expected to be the best in the world in the next decade.

This work led to other research on the propagation of optical solitons in optical fibers.