Speaker
Description
"The Einstein Equivalence Principle (EEP), stating that all laws of physics take their special-relativistic form in any local inertial (classical) reference frame, lies at the core of general relativity.
Because of its fundamental status, this principle could be a very powerful guide in formulating physical laws at regimes where both gravitational and quantum effects are relevant. The formulation of the EEP only holds when both matter systems and gravity are classical, and we do not know whether we should abandon or modify it when we test it with quantum systems and/or the gravitational field is not classical. In my talk, I propose an extension of the EEP which relies on quantum reference frames, namely the possibility that reference frames can be associated to quantum systems, and hence be in a quantum superposition or entangled relative to each other. In addition, I show that this generalised principle can be tested, for classical gravity, using atom interferometry with quantum clocks. Finally, I will argue that such an extension of the EEP can overcome Penrose’s argument in favour of the classicality of the gravitational field."
