Related papers: Geophysical test of the universality of free-fall
The universality of free fall is one of the most cherished principles in classical gravity. Its fate in the quantum world is one of the key questions in fundamental physics. We investigate the universality of free fall in the context of…
Superconducting gravimeters are the most sensitive instruments to measure surface gravity changes at low frequencies. Currently, about twenty five superconducting gravimeters are operating in the world and their global network has been…
The Universality of Free Fall and the Weak Equivalence Principle, which are at the basis of General Relativity, have been confirmed to 1 part in 10^13. Space experiments with macroscopic test masses of different composition orbiting the…
We report a test of the universality of free fall (UFF) related to spin-gravity coupling effects by comparing the gravity acceleration of the $^{87}$Rb atoms in $m_F=+1$ versus that in $m_F=-1$, where the corresponding spin orientations are…
The theory of general relativity describes macroscopic phenomena driven by the influence of gravity while quantum mechanics brilliantly accounts for microscopic effects. Despite their tremendous individual success, a complete unification of…
Fundamental constants are a cornerstone of our physical laws. Any constant varying in space and/or time would reflect the existence of an almost massless field that couples to matter. This will induce a violation of the universality of free…
Based on the Schwarzschild solution of the Einstein equation of gravitational field, it is proved that the speed of light speed would change and isotropy of light speed would be violated in gravitational field with spherical symmetry. On…
Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity, has passed stringent tests in laboratories, elsewhere in the Solar Sytem, and in pulsar binaries. Nevertheless it is known to be incompatible with quantum mechanics and must differ from the…
Owing to Earth's rotation a free-fall body would move in an elliptical orbit rather than along a straight line forward to the center of the Earth. In this paper on the basis of the theory for spin-spin coupling between macroscopic rotating…
Cosmological observations are beginning to reach a level of precision that allow us to test some of the most fundamental assumptions in our working model of the Universe. One such an assumption is that gravity is governed by the General…
We present the scientific motivation for future space tests of the equivalence principle, and in particular the universality of free fall, at the $10^{-17}$ level or better. Two possible mission scenarios, one based on quantum technologies,…
Can quantum-mechanical particles propagating on a fixed spacetime background be approximated as test bodies satisfying the weak equivalence principle? We ultimately answer the question in the negative but find that, when universality of…
When a light scalar field with gravitational strength interacts with matter, the weak equivalence principle is in general violated, leading for instance to a violation of the universality of free fall. This has been known and tested for a…
(Short abstract). In Galilean physics, the universality of free fall implies an inertial frame, which in turns implies that the mass m of the falling body is omitted. Otherwise, an additional acceleration proportional to m/M would rise…
Fundamental constants are a cornerstone of the physical laws. Any constant varying in space and/or time would signal a violation of local position invariance and be associated with a violation of the universality of free fall, and hence of…
I wish to expound a novel perspective of probing universal character of gravity. To begin with, inclusion of zero mass particle in mechanics leads to special relativity while its interaction with a universal force shared by all particles…
In this paper we very preliminarily investigate the possibility of measuring the post-Newtonian general relativistic gravitoelectric and gravitomagnetic components of the acceleration of gravity on the Earth, in continuous regime, with two…
To date, no framework combining quantum field theory and general relativity and hence unifying all four fundamental interactions, exists. Violations of the Einstein's equivalence principle (EEP), being the foundation of general relativity,…
Atom interferometers allow the measurement of the acceleration of freely falling atoms with respect to an experimental platform at rest on Earth's surface. Such experiments have been used to test the universality of free fall by comparing…
In this chapter, we discuss recent work on precision Earth laboratory tests of different aspects of gravity. In particular the discussion is focused on those tests that can be used to probe hypothesis for physics beyond Newtonian gravity…