Photon-Gravity Coupling in Schwarzschild Spacetime

Abstract

A canonical formalism for quantum electrodynamics in curved spacetime is developed. This formalism enables a systematic investigation of photons in the Schwarzschild gravitational field, yielding novel results as well as refining previous results that were predicted by heuristic methods. The claim that "the gravitational redshift is a shift in the sharp frequencies of the photons for all frequencies of the spectrum" is proved. It is shown the gravitational decoherence is due to photon-gravity coupling and observer-dependent quantum electrodynamics in curved spacetime phenomena. The proper value of the photon gravitational interferometric relative phase shift is calculated and its full quantum-general relativistic nature is demonstrated. It is shown its observation will falsify the validity of Newtonian gravity and the extension of the Einstein equivalence principle beyond a single point (even in the weak uniform gravitational field.)