Gravitational Spin Hall Effect of Dirac Particle and the Weak Equivalence Principle

Abstract

We present a spin-induced none-geodesic effect of Dirac wave packets in a static uniform gravitational field. Our approach is based on the Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation of Dirac equation in a curved spacetime, which predicts the gravitational spin-orbit coupling. Due to this coupling, we find that the dynamics of the free-fall Dirac wave packets with opposite spin polarization will yield the transverse splitting in the direction perpendicular to spin orientation and gravity, which is known as the gravitational spin Hall effect. Even in a static uniform gravitational field, such effect suggests that the weak equivalence principle is violated for quantum particles.