Generalized Uncertainty Principle in Astrophysics from Fermi Statistical Physics Arguments

Abstract

The Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is one of the most important concepts in quantum mechanics. One of its important outcomes is that enormously high momentum is required to look at extremely small length-scales. Nevertheless, quantum gravity and Grand Unified models taught us that a minimal observable length cutoff which is of the order of the Planck length is required. Such an important feature suggests that the conventional uncertainty principle must be generalized and accordingly the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is replaced by a generalized uncertainty relation. Although the effects of the generalized uncertainty relation can only be found in the context of extremely high energies/short distances and not at any scale currently probed in the laboratory, we discuss in this study its impacts on white dwarfs using the quantum mechanical statistical properties of a degenerate Fermi gas in D-spatial dimensions. Both the non-relativistic and extreme relativistic cases were discussed. It was observed that the effect of the generalized uncertainty relation is to shrink the radius of proton, a phenomenon which was observed recently using high precision laser spectroscopy of atomic hydrogen. Several points were discussed and a number of quantum statistical properties were derived.