No Arabic abstract
Short-range experiments testing the gravitational inverse-square law at the submillimeter scale offer uniquely sensitive probes of Lorentz invariance. A combined analysis of results from the short-range gravity experiments HUST-2015, HUST-2011, IU-2012, and IU-2002 permits the first independent measurements of the 14 nonrelativistic coefficients for Lorentz violation in the pure-gravity sector at the level of $10^{-9}$ m$^2$, improving by an order of magnitude the sensitivity to numerous types of Lorentz violation involving quadratic curvature derivatives and curvature couplings.
Precision measurements of the inverse-square law via experiments on short-range gravity provide sensitive tests of Lorentz symmetry. A combined analysis of data from experiments at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Indiana University sets simultaneous limits on all 22 coefficients for Lorentz violation correcting the Newton force law as the inverse sixth power of distance. Results are consistent with no effect at the level of $10^{-12}$ m$^{4}$.
The Newton limit of gravity is studied in the presence of Lorentz-violating gravitational operators of arbitrary mass dimension. The linearized modified Einstein equations are obtained and the perturbative solutions are constructed and characterized. We develop a formalism for data analysis in laboratory experiments testing gravity at short range and demonstrate that these tests provide unique sensitivity to deviations from local Lorentz invariance.
Recently, first limits on putative Lorentz invariance violation coefficients in the pure gravity sector were determined by the reanalysis of short-range gravity experiments. Such experiments search for new physics at sidereal frequencies. They are not, however, designed to optimize the signal strength of a Lorentz invariance violation force; in fact the Lorentz violating signal is suppressed in the planar test mass geometry employed in those experiments. We describe a short-range torsion pendulum experiment with enhanced sensitivity to possible Lorentz violating signals. A periodic, striped test mass geometry is used to augment the signal. Careful arrangement of the phases of the striped patterns on opposite ends of the pendulum further enhances the signal while simultaneously suppressing the Newtonian background.
A search for sidereal variations in the non-Newtonian force between two tungsten plates separated at millimeter ranges sets experimental limits on Lorentz invariance violation involving quadratic couplings of Riemann curvature. We show that the Lorentz invariance violation force between two finite flat plates is dominated by the edge effects, which includes a suppression effect leading to lower limits than previous rough estimates. From this search, we determine the current best constraints of the Lorentz invariance violating coefficients at a level of $10^{-8}$ m$^{2}$.
We consider the possibility of the scenario in which the $P$, $T$ and Lorentz symmetry of the relativistic quantum vacuum are all the combined symmetries. These symmetries emerge as a result of the symmetry breaking of the more fundamental $P$, $T$ and Lorentz symmetries of the original vacuum, which is invariant under separate groups of the coordinate transformations and spin rotations. The condensed matter vacua (ground states) suggest two possible scenarios of the origin of the combined Lorentz symmetry, both are realized in the superfluid phases of liquid $^3$He: the $^3$He-A scenario and the $^3$He-B scenario. In these scenarios the gravitational tetrads are considered as the order parameter of the symmetry breaking in the quantum vacuum. The $^3$He-B scenarios applied to the Minkowski vacuum leads to the continuous degeneracy of the Minkowski vacuum with respect to the $O(3,1)$ spin rotations. The symmetry breaking leads to the corresponding topological objects, which appear due to the nontrivial topology of the manifold of the degenerate Minkowski vacua, such as torsion strings. The 4-fold degeneracy of the Minkowski vacuum with respect to discrete $P$ and $T$ symmetries suggests that the Weyl fermions are described by four different tetrad fields: the tetrad for the left-handed fermions, the tetrad for the right-handed fermions, and the tetrads for their antiparticles. This may lead to the gravity with several metric fields, so that the parity violation may lead to the breaking of equivalence principle. Finally we considered the application of the gravitational tetrads for the solution of the cosmological constant problem.