English

Gravitational Lensing and Extra Dimensions

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2007-05-23 v1 Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We study gravitational lensing and the bending of light in low energy scale (M_S) gravity theories with extra space-time dimensions n. We find that due to the presence of spin-2 Kaluza-Klein states from compactification, a correction to the deflection angle with a strong quadratic dependence on the photon energy is introduced. No deviation from the Einstein General Relativity prediction for the deflection angle for photons grazing the Sun in the visible band with 15% accuracy (90% c.l.) implies that the scale M_S has to be larger than 1.4(2/(n-2))^{1/4} TeV and approximately 4 TeV for n=2. This lower bound is comparable with that from collider physics constraints. Gravitational lensing experiments with higher energy photons can provide stronger constraints.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/9908469,
  title  = {Gravitational Lensing and Extra Dimensions},
  author = {Xiao-Gang He and Girish C. Joshi and Bruce H. J. McKellar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/9908469},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

Latex 11 pages with one figure