TY - GEN A1 - Rätzel, Dennis A1 - Wilkens, Martin A1 - Menzel, Ralf T1 - Gravitational properties of light BT - the gravitational field of a laser pulse N2 - The gravitational field of a laser pulse of finite lifetime, is investigated in the framework of linearized gravity. Although the effects are very small, they may be of fundamental physical interest. It is shown that the gravitational field of a linearly polarized light pulse is modulated as the norm of the corresponding electric field strength, while no modulations arise for circular polarization. In general, the gravitational field is independent of the polarization direction. It is shown that all physical effects are confined to spherical shells expanding with the speed of light, and that these shells are imprints of the spacetime events representing emission and absorption of the pulse. Nearby test particles at rest are attracted towards the pulse trajectory by the gravitational field due to the emission of the pulse, and they are repelled from the pulse trajectory by the gravitational field due to its absorption. Examples are given for the size of the attractive effect. It is recovered that massless test particles do not experience any physical effect if they are co-propagating with the pulse, and that the acceleration of massless test particles counter-propagating with respect to the pulse is four times stronger than for massive particles at rest. The similarities between the gravitational effect of a laser pulse and Newtonian gravity in two dimensions are pointed out. The spacetime curvature close to the pulse is compared to that induced by gravitational waves from astronomical sources. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 222 KW - electromagnetic radiation KW - general relativity KW - gravity KW - laser pulses KW - linearized gravity KW - pp-wave solutions Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-90553 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Menzel, Ralf A1 - Puhlmann, Dirk A1 - Heuer, Axel T1 - Complementarity in single photon interference – the role of the mode function and vacuum fields N2 - Background In earlier experiments the role of the vacuum fields could be demonstrated as the source of complementarity with respect to the temporal properties (Heuer et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114:053601, 2015). Methods Single photon first order interferences of spatially separated regions from the cone structure of spontaneous parametric down conversion allow for analyzing the role of the mode function in quantum optics regarding the complementarity principle. Results Here the spatial coherence properties of these vacuum fields are demonstrated as the physical reason for complementarity in these single photon quantum optical experiments. These results are directly connected to the mode picture in classical optics. Conclusion The properties of the involved vacuum fields selected via the measurement process are the physical background of the complementarity principle in quantum optics. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 333 KW - Complementarity KW - Mode function KW - Quantum optics KW - Vacuum fields Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-395210 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Menzel, Ralf A1 - Heuer, Axel A1 - Milonni, Peter W. T1 - Entanglement, complementarity, and vacuum fields in spontaneous parametric down-conversion T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Using two crystals for spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a parallel setup, we observe two-photon interference with high visibility. The high visibility is consistent with complementarity and the absence of which-path information. The observations are explained as the effects of entanglement or equivalently in terms of interfering probability amplitudes and also by the calculation of a second-order field correlation function in the Heisenberg picture. The latter approach brings out explicitly the role of the vacuum fields in the down-conversion at the crystals and in the photon coincidence counting. For comparison, we show that the Hong–Ou–Mandel dip can be explained by the same approach in which the role of the vacuum signal and idler fields, as opposed to entanglement involving vacuum states, is emphasized. We discuss the fundamental limitations of a theory in which these vacuum fields are treated as classical, stochastic fields. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1077 KW - complementarity KW - vacuum fields KW - entanglement KW - Hong-Ou-Mandel effect KW - spontaneous parametric down-conversion Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-473542 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 1077 ER -