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Cumulative effects of laser-generated gravitational shock waves

Riccardo Falcone and Claudio Conti

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 033079 – Published 21 July, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ylvn-3ybm

Abstract

The emission of light pulses is expected to generate gravitational waves, opening the possibility of controlling gravity in an Earthed laboratory. However, measuring the optically driven spacetime deformations is challenging due to the inherently weak interaction. We explore the possibility to achieve a detectable gravitational effect from light emission by examining the cumulative effect of a sequence of laser-generated gravitational shock waves on a test particle. We derive an exact solution to the Einstein equations for cylindrically shaped optical beams with constant energy density, imposing a continuity condition for the metric and its first-order derivatives. Our analysis reveals that laser-induced gravitational fields cause a spatial shift in the test particle, which is measurable within current interferometric technology.

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 033079– Published 21 July, 2025
  • Received 22 January 2025
  • Accepted 17 June 2025
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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.

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