Airborne Comparisons of an Ultra-Stable Quartz Oscillator With a H-Maser as Another Possible Validation of General Relativity

Andrei A. Grishaev

Abstract:	According to general relativity, frequency gravitational shifts are the consequence of time retardation in the vicinity of massive bodies. Time retardation must cause the same relative shifts of frequencies for oscillators of all types. According to the quasi-Newtonian approach, frequency gravitational shifts are caused by changes in parameters of oscillators: near a massive body the effective mass of classical oscillators is increased, and the energy levels of quantum oscillators are lowered. Thus, gravitational shifts in the cases of classical and quantum oscillators have different natures, and the shift predicted in the classical case are half the shift in the quantum case, which in a linear approximation coincides with the prediction of general relativity. Note that both general relativity and the quasi-Newtonian approach agree with the experiments performed so far: gravitational effects are tiny, and they have only been observed with the help of precise quantum oscillators. But recently an ultra-stable quartz; i.e., classical, oscillator became available. It would be of interest to compare a quartz oscillator with a quantum frequency standard onboard a plane, searching for a variation of their frequency difference which is correlated with a change in altitude. According to general relativity, the difference in their gravitational shifts should be equal to zero. According to the quasi-Newtonian approach, a 20-km change in altitude should cause an effect on the order of 1.1 x 10-l*. It could be detected by an ultra-stable quartz oscillator and by a transportable H-maser for averaging times of about IO s with the sampling time, i.e., the period of altitude change is several minutes long. An absence of difference in gravitational relative shifts of frequencies of quartz and hydrogen standards could be treated as an additional argument in favor of time retardation in the vicinity of massive bodies.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 31th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting December 7 - 9, 1999 Marriott's Laguna Cliffs Resort Dana Point, California
Pages:	657 - 660
Cite this article:	Grishaev, Andrei A., "Airborne Comparisons of an Ultra-Stable Quartz Oscillator With a H-Maser as Another Possible Validation of General Relativity," Proceedings of the 31th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting, Dana Point, California, December 1999, pp. 657-660.
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