A TRAPPED DIPOLAR BEC INTERFEROMETRY TEST OF E = mc2

Abstract

It is shown that, by arranging the atoms in a Bose–Einstein condensate gas within an optical lattice, it is possible to directly verify experimentally that the van der Waals potential energy contributes an effective change to the gravitational mass of the atoms trapped in the array sites equal to that predicted by Einstein's mass–energy equivalency equation, E = mgc2. Some original results of electrostatics and quantum mechanics in curved space are discussed, and strategies to amplify and observe these effects are quantitatively evaluated to illustrate the feasibility of the novel test proposed herein.