Doppler effect in rotating systems and Mössbauer rotor experiments

Abstract

We address once more the problem of the physical interpretation of the Mössbauer effect in a rotating system in the view of the recently discovered extra energy shift (EES) between emitted and absorbed resonant radiation, which emerges in addition to the usual second order Doppler shift for an orbiting absorber. We highlight that both fractional components of the total energy shift have the same sign and correspond to the blueshift of the resonant radiation propagating from the rotational axis to the rotor rim. We indicate a possible way of understanding the origin of the EES in terms of combining metric effects in rotating systems with the quantum mechanical description of resonant nuclei confined in crystal cells by taking into account the recoil-free essence of the Mössbauer effect, where no energy is transmitted to the source (absorber) during the emission (absorption) of resonant radiation.