Constraints from orbital motions around the Earth of the environmental fifth-force hypothesis for the OPERA superluminal neutrino phenomenology

TL;DR

This paper derives orbital constraints on a hypothetical fifth force of gravitational origin proposed to explain superluminal neutrino results, using satellite and lunar data to limit the force's strength and range.

Contribution

It provides general analytical bounds on Yukawa-type fifth-force parameters from orbital motion data, applicable beyond the specific OPERA superluminal neutrino hypothesis.

Findings

Constraints on the coupling parameter |alpha| for different force ranges.

Limits on the scale M_* of the fifth force from satellite and lunar data.

Bounds extend to any Yukawa-type fifth-force scenario.

Abstract

It has been recently suggested by Dvali and Vikman that the superluminal neutrino phenomenology of the OPERA experiment may be due to an environmental feature of the Earth, naturally yielding a long-range fifth force of gravitational origin whose coupling with the neutrino is set by the scale M_*, in units of reduced Planck mass. Its characteristic length lambda should not be smaller than one Earth's radius R_e, while its upper bound is expected to be slightly smaller than the Earth-Moon distance (60 R_e). We analytically work out some orbital effects of a Yukawa-type fifth force for a test particle moving in the modified field of a central body. Our results are quite general since they are not restricted to any particular size of lambda; moreover, they are valid for an arbitrary orbital configuration of the particle, i.e. for any value of its eccentricity $e$. We find that the dimensionless strength coupling parameter alpha is constrained to |alpha| <= 1 10^-10-4 10^-9 for 1 R_e <= lambda <= 10 R_e by the laser data of the Earth's artificial satellite LAGEOS II, corresponding to M_* >= 4 10^9 -1.6 10^10. The Moon perigee allows to obtain |alpha| <= 3 10^-11 for the Earth-Moon pair in the range 15 R_e <= lambda <= 60 R_e, which translates as M_* >= 3 10^10 - 4.5 10^10. Our results are neither necessarily limited to the superluminal OPERA scenario nor to the Dvali-Vikman model, in which it is M_* = 10^-6 at lambda = 1 R_e, in contrast with our bounds: they generally extend to any theoretical scenario implying a fifth-force of Yukawa-type.