Holometer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Holographic noise in the universe
Graphic depicting the predicted holographic noise in the universe

The Fermilab Holometer is a laser interferometer from Fermilab in Illinois that has been in operation since the end of August 2014 . It should be the world's most sensitive laser interferometer and thus exceed the sensitivity of the GEO600 and LIGO experiments . In theory, its sensitivity is sufficient to detect holographic fluctuations in space-time .

According to the project managers, the holometer should be so sensitive that it can detect fluctuations in light on the order of an attometer . It thus achieves or exceeds the sensitivity that is necessary to measure in the range of the smallest size units in the universe , the so-called Planck units . The Fermilab explains: “Today everyone knows blurry and pixelated images or the sound transmissions full of background noises that are associated with low bandwidth on the Internet. The holometer searches for the equivalent noise or disturbances in reality itself that can be associated with the ultimate frequency limit imposed by nature itself. "

Craig Hogan, an astroparticle physicist at Fermilab, comments on the experiment, “What we are looking for, we hope to find when the lasers get out of sync. We try to discover the smallest unit in the universe. It's really fun, it's kind of an old-fashioned physics experiment where you just don't know what will come out in the end. "

The experimental physicist Hartmut Grote from the Max Planck Institute explains that - even if he is skeptical that the apparatus is able to detect the holographic fluctuations of the universe - if the experiment is successful, it would have “a very strong influence on one of the most important open questions in fundamental physics . It would be the first evidence that space-time, the basis of the universe, is quantized "."

The hypothesis that the holographic noise could be observed in this way was criticized for the fact that the theoretical foundations required for this violated the Lorentz invariance . The violation of the Lorentz transformation, on the other hand, has since been severely restricted, an aspect that is based on the inadequate mathematical treatment.

The experiment

The holometer consists of two ( power-recycling mirror ) Michelson interferometers , similar to the instruments used in the LIGO experiment. The interferometers can operate in two spatial configurations called nested and back-to-back . According to Hogan's hypothesis, in the nested configuration the beam splitters of the interferometers should appear to move sideways together in lockstep (the shift should therefore be correlated), while in the back-to-back configuration the lateral shifting of the beam splitters appears to be independent of one another, i.e. uncorrelated. The presence or absence of the correlated displacement effect can be detected in any configuration by the cross-correlation of the output of the interferometers.

The first results, with which Hogan's theory of a discrete spacetime structure with high statistical significance (4.6 sigma) could be excluded, were published on December 3, 2015. It was thus established that space-time is not quantized in the measured scale.

accuracy

The predicted movements of the beam splitter should result from , where lp means the Planck length and L 40 meters (the arm length of the holometer), at frequencies around a few megahertz. This is equivalent to a movement of about 10 attometers (10 × 10 −18 meters) in a third of a microsecond and corresponds to an offset of about one millimeter per year, i.e. about ten times slower than the continental drift .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.shortnews.de/id/1104146/holometer-projekt-ist-das-universum-nur-ein-hologramm-aus-zwei-dimensions
  2. ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/29/space-hologram-experiment-two-dimensions_n_5726262.html
  3. ^ A b c Mosher, David: World's Most Precise Clocks Could Reveal Universe Is a Hologram . Wired . October 28, 2010. Retrieved March 12, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b The Fermilab Holometer . Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory . Retrieved November 1, 2010.
  5. ↑ Dillow, Clay: Fermilab is building a 'holometer' to Determine Whether Once and For All Reality Is Just an Illusion . Popular Science . October 21, 2010. Retrieved March 12, 2013.
  6. ↑ Do We Live in a Two-Dimensional Universe? An interview with physicist Craig Hogan . In: Joe Hubris , June 29, 2012. Retrieved March 12, 2013. 
  7. ↑ Back Reaction, Holographic Noise
  8. ↑ a b A. Cho: Sparks Fly Over Shoestring Test Of 'Holographic Principle' . In: Science . Vol. 336, 2012, pp. 147–149 , doi : 10.1126 / science.336.6078.147 (English, sciencemag.org ).
  9. ^ Andre Salles: Holometer rules out first theory of space-time correlations. fermilab, December 3, 2015, accessed February 5, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Aaron S. Chou and the Holometer Collaboration: First Measurements of High Frequency Cross-Spectra from a Pair of Large Michelson Interferometers . In: Phys. Rev. Lett. tape 117 , December 3, 2015, p. 111102 , doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.117.111102 , arxiv : 1512.01216 .
  11. ↑ Holometer: Frequently Asked Question . Retrieved January 29, 2013.

Web links