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Phys. Rev. D 74, 024012 (2006) [12 pages]

Spectral line broadening and angular blurring due to spacetime geometry fluctuations

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R. T. Thompson* and L. H. Ford
Institute of Cosmology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, USA

Received 30 January 2006; published 10 July 2006

We treat two possible phenomenological effects of quantum fluctuations of spacetime geometry: spectral line broadening and angular blurring of the image of a distance source. A geometrical construction will be used to express both effects in terms of the Riemann tensor correlation function. We apply the resulting expressions to study some explicit examples in which the fluctuations arise from a bath of gravitons in either a squeezed state or a thermal state. In the case of a squeezed state, one has two limits of interest: a coherent state which exhibits classical time variation but no fluctuations, and a squeezed vacuum state, in which the fluctuations are maximized.

© 2006 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.74.024012
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.74.024012
PACS:
04.60.−m, 04.62.+v, 05.40.−a

*Electronic address: robert@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu

Electronic address: ford@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu