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  • Open Access

Response of interferometers to the vacuum of quantum gravity

Daniel Carney1,*, Manthos Karydas1,†, and Allic Sivaramakrishnan2,‡

  • *Contact author: carney@lbl.gov
  • †Contact author: mkarydas@lbl.gov
  • ‡Contact author: allic@caltech.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 106002 – Published 6 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/j5kj-zdky

Abstract

It has recently been suggested that exotic quantum gravity effects could lead to large vacuum fluctuations, potentially observable with realistic detectors. Experiments are currently being built to search for these signals. Here we analyze the minimal model of quantum gravity at low energies—the usual effective quantum field theory of gravitons—and show that it unambiguously predicts an unobservably small variation in the measured interferometer length ΔL∼ℓpl∼10−35  m. In particular, there are no divergences signaling a breakdown of this calculation in the low energy regime. Thus, detection of a large, gravitationally induced length variation would signal a severe breakdown of effective quantum field theory in low energy quantum gravity.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 106002– Published 6 May, 2026
  • Received 6 September 2024
  • Accepted 11 March 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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