Gravitational Casimir-Polder effect

Abstract The interaction due to quantum gravitational vacuum fluctuations between a gravitationally polarizable object modelled as a two-level system and a gravitational boundary is investigated. This quantum gravitational interaction is found to be position-dependent, which induces a force in close analogy to the Casimir–Polder force in the electromagnetic case. For a Dirichlet boundary, the quantum gravitational potential for the polarizable object in its ground-state is shown to behave like z − 5 in the near zone, and z − 6 in the far zone, where z is the distance to the boundary. For a concrete example, where a Bose–Einstein condensate is taken as a gravitationally polarizable object, the relative correction to the radius of the BEC caused by fluctuating quantum gravitational waves in vacuum is found to be of order 10 − 21 . Although the correction is far too small to observe in comparison with its electromagnetic counterpart, it is nevertheless of the order of the gravitational strain caused by a recently detected black hole merger on the arms of the LIGO.