Stephen Paul King (stephenk1@home.com)
Sat, 13 Mar 1999 02:29:46 GMT
This applies to Local Time theory!
Eric Forgy <forgy@uiuc.edu> wrote:
On 13 Mar 1999 00:11:17 GMT, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>A while back, I asked about a relation between vector potentials and
>connection coefficients. I then learned that this is at the heart of
>gauge theory. I was interested in Weyl's unification of gravitation and
>electromagnetism. While reading about Weyl's theory in the book "The
>Dawning of Gauge Theory" by O'Raifeartaigh, it gave an argument (one of
>many) why Weyl's theory was incorrect. One argument that comes to mind
>is it mentioned that the conformal rescaling of the metric would lead to
>a so-called "gravitational Aharonov-Bohm" effect. To quote directly
>
>pg.85
>
>"...one can summarize Einstein's objection to Weyl's theory as the
>statement that. according to atomic spectroscopy, there is no
>Aharonov-Bohm effect for gravitation."
>
>also pg.85
>
>"...in effect, Weyl was assigning an (imaginary) electric charge to the
>metric tensor. From this point of view, Einstein's objection to the
>theory is very understandable."
>
>That is a strong enough argument for me (and hopefully for anyone) to
>see that Weyl's theory is in fact unphysical. However, the thing that
>caught my attention is something I just read in a paper:
>
>"On Gauge Aspects of Gravity"
>-Frank Gronwald and Friedrich W. Hehl
>-http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9602013
>
>In this paper, they mention the experimental results of
>Colella-Overhauser-Werner. I should quote directly to avoid
>miscommunication:
>
>"Twenty years ago a new epoch began in gravity:
>Colella-Overhauser-Werner measured by interferometric methods a phase
>shift of the wave function of a neutron caused by the gravitational
>field of the earth."
>
>This sounds a WHOLE LOT like a gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect to me.
>Was the statement "there is no Aharonov-Bohm effect for gravitation" in
>O'Raifeartaigh wrong?
>
>The absence of a measurable gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect in atomic
>spectra can easily be explained by the relative magnitudes of the
>electromagnetic and gravitational forces. This is why it was observed
>via a study involving neutrons.
>
>I am speculating that the observed gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect is
>compatible with a conformal rescaling of the metric under parallel
>transport. Am I making sense?
>
>Thank you for any comments.
>
>Eric
>
>
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