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Very special relativity in accelerated frames: Nonrelativistic effects in gravitational spectroscopy of ultracold neutrons

Alessandro Santoni1,2,*, Enrique Muñoz2,†, Hartmut Abele3,‡, and Benjamin Koch1,2,§

  • *Contact author: asantoni@uc.cl
  • †Contact author: ejmunozt@uc.cl
  • ‡Contact author: hartmut.abele@tuwien.ac.at
  • §Contact author: benjamin.koch@tuwien.ac.at
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Phys. Rev. D 111, 116017 – Published 17 June, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/18df-wsv1

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the phenomenology of fermionic systems in uniform gravitational fields within the framework of very special relativity (VSR). We focus on the case of gravitational spectroscopy with ultracold neutrons, explored in experiments like qbounce. Calculating the leading (c0) and next-to-leading (c−1) order corrections to the nonrelativistic Hamiltonian in an accelerated frame, we obtain the perturbed fermionic energy spectrum. At leading order, we do not find any modifications except for a trivial mass shift, thus preserving the equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass and particle-antiparticle sectors. The next-to-leading order corrections, instead, introduce time-dependent anisotropic contributions depending on the preferred spatial direction in VSR, and can then be used to probe novel Lorentz-violating signatures. Taking qbounce sensitivity as a benchmark, we derive a first rough constraint for the neutron VSR parameter. Finally, we suggest alternative spin-flipping setups to better probe VSR effects and foresee potential future research directions.

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Phys. Rev. D 111, 116017– Published 17 June, 2025
  • Received 9 January 2025
  • Accepted 16 May 2025
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