English

Dynamical measurements of deviations from Newton's $1/r^2$ law

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2022-02-28 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

In a previous work (arXiv:1609.05654v2), an experimental setup aiming at the measurement of deviations from the Newtonian 1/r21/r^2 distance dependence of gravitational interactions was proposed. The theoretical idea behind this setup was to study the trajectories of a "Satellite" with a mass mSO(109)m_{\rm S} \sim {\cal O}(10^{-9}) g\mathrm{g} around a "Planet" with mass mP[107,105]m_{\rm P} \in [10^{-7},10^{-5} ] g\mathrm{g}, looking for precession of the orbit. The observation of such feature induced by gravitational interactions would be an unambiguous indication of a gravitational potential with terms different from 1/r1/r and, thus, a powerful tool to detect deviations from Newton's 1/r21/r^2 law. In this paper we optimize the proposed setup in order to achieve maximal sensitivity to look for {\em Beyond-Newtonian} corrections. We study in detail possible background sources that could induce precession and quantify their impact on the achievable sensitivity. We conclude that a dynamical measurement of deviations from newtonianity can test Yukawa-like corrections to the 1/r1/r potential with strength as low as α102\alpha \sim 10^{-2} for distances as small as λ10μm\lambda \sim 10 \, \mu\mathrm{m}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2106.08611,
  title  = {Dynamical measurements of deviations from Newton's $1/r^2$ law},
  author = {J. Baeza-Ballesteros and A. Donini and S. Nadal-Gisbert},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.08611},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Two-column format (26 pages), 18 figures. Matches published version. References added, new appendix and minor corrections