Eotvos bounds on couplings of fundamental parameters to gravity

TL;DR

This paper derives stringent bounds on how fundamental constants and parameters may vary with gravity by analyzing Eötvös-type experiments, improving previous limits by orders of magnitude.

Contribution

It introduces bounds on fundamental parameter variations from Eötvös experiments, including nuclear binding energy effects, surpassing atomic clock constraints.

Findings

Variations of fundamental parameters are bounded at 10^-8 to 10^-9.

Inclusion of nuclear binding energy effects enhances the bounds.

Bounds improve by 2-3 orders of magnitude over previous atomic clock limits.

Abstract

The possible dependence of fundamental couplings and mass ratios on the gravitational potential has been bounded by comparing atomic clock frequencies over Earth's elliptical orbit. Here we evaluate bounds on such dependence from E"otv"os-type experiments that test the Weak Equivalence Principle, including previously neglected contributions from nuclear binding energy. We find that variations of fundamental parameters correlated with the gravitational potential are bounded at 10^-8--10^-9, an improvement of 2--3 orders of magnitude over atomic clock bounds.