Bending of light in quantum gravity
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Updated: Apr 16, 2026

The Generation of Higher-order Laguerre-Gauss Optical Beams for High-precision Interferometry
Published on: August 12, 2013
N E J Bjerrum-Bohr1, John F Donoghue2, Barry R Holstein2
1Niels Bohr International Academy and Discovery Center, The Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark.
Abstract:
We consider the scattering of lightlike matter in the presence of a heavy scalar object (such as the Sun or a Schwarzschild black hole). By treating general relativity as an effective field theory we directly compute the nonanalytic components of the one-loop gravitational amplitude for the scattering of massless scalars or photons from an external massive scalar field. These results allow a semiclassical computation of the bending angle for light rays grazing the Sun, including long-range ℏ contributions. We discuss implications of this computation, in particular, the violation of some classical formulations of the equivalence principle.
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