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Equation 6 · The Corner of the Equivalence Principle No Experiment Has Touched

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η^\hat\eta

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η^\hat\eta

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Magdalena Zych and Časlav Brukner’s 2018 paper supplies the anchor the new work builds directly on top of: a classical body’s equivalence principle, they argue, says nothing at all about whether the quantum version holds, because a quantum system’s mass is not one number but an operator, and equivalence has to be stated as equivalence between its rest, inertial, and gravitational internal-energy operators rather than between their average values [ 1 ] . Model that operator, call it M^\hat M , as M^\hat M = m(1 + H^int\hat H_{int}/mc2c^2) , where H^int\hat H_{int} is the system’s internal Hamiltonian, and let the gravitational mass be mgm_g = mi(1+η^)m_i(1 + \hat\eta) for some violation operator η^\hat\eta acting on the…
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Magdalena Zych and Časlav Brukner’s 2018 paper supplies the anchor the new work builds directly on top of: a classical body’s equivalence principle, they argue, says nothing at all about whether the quantum version holds, because a quantum system’s mass is not one number but an operator, and equivalence has to be stated as equivalence between its rest, inertial, and gravitational internal-energy operators rather than between their average values [ 1 ] . Model that operator, call it M^\hat M , as M^\hat M = m(1 + H^int\hat H_{int}/mc2c^2) , where H^int\hat H_{int} is the system’s internal Hamiltonian, and let the gravitational mass be mgm_g = mi(1+η^)m_i(1 + \hat\eta) for some violation operator η^\hat\eta acting on the internal, and for two-body tests the joint, Hilbert space. Expand that operator and, the paper argues, exactly five structurally distinct pieces fall out:

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