Magdalena Zych

---

Mass-energy equivalence principle is considered an important consequence of General Relativity. I will reverse the usual approach and take the validity of the mass-energy equivalence principle as a postulate within the non-relativistic mechanics. In the classical case this yields special and general relativistic time dilation effects (to lowest order) and Nordtvedt’s quantitative version of the Schiff’s conjecture – a relation between the violations of the universality of free fall and deviations from the gravitational redshift. However, these results do not necessarily extend to quantum mechanics. Various semiclassical extensions of the mass-energy equivalence principle will be presented that correspond to theories in which the free fall and/or the time dilation effects are modified in the presence of quantum effects. These theories in general violate Schiff’s conjecture, yet, in the scenario considered by Nordtvedt, they all agree with the classical result. I will explain this apparent “paradox” and derive a quantum version of the Nordtvedt’s relation from a fully quantum extension of the mass-energy equivalence principle. In the end I briefly discuss experimental scenarios that allow distinguishing between these various formulations of the mass-energy equivalence principle.

---

Universität Wien
Seminarraum Theoretische Physik
Contact: not specified