Classical tests of general relativity in brane world models

TL;DR

This paper examines classical tests of general relativity within brane world models, developing a formalism to analyze Solar System tests and constraining model parameters using observational data.

Contribution

It introduces a general formalism for testing spherically symmetric brane world solutions against Solar System observations.

Findings

Observational data constrain the parameters of brane world models.

Brane solutions show distinct properties from standard black holes.

The formalism enables systematic analysis of Solar System tests for these models.

Abstract

The classical tests of general relativity (perihelion precession, deflection of light, and the radar echo delay) are considered for several spherically symmetric static vacuum solutions in brane world models. Generally, the spherically symmetric vacuum solutions of the brane gravitational field equations have properties quite distinct as compared to the standard black hole solutions of general relativity. As a first step a general formalism that facilitates the analysis of general relativistic Solar System tests for any given spherically symmetric metric is developed. It is shown that the existing observational Solar System data on the perihelion shift of Mercury, on the light bending around the Sun (obtained using long-baseline radio interferometry), and ranging to Mars using the Viking lander, constrain the numerical values of the parameters of the specific models.