Enhanced sensitivity to Lorentz invariance violations in short-range gravity experiments

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel short-range gravity experiment using a striped test mass geometry and phase arrangement to significantly improve sensitivity to potential Lorentz invariance violations, which are not well detected by previous setups.

Contribution

It introduces a new experimental design with striped test masses and phase optimization to enhance detection of Lorentz violation signals in gravity tests.

Findings

Enhanced sensitivity to Lorentz violating signals achieved

Suppressed Newtonian background noise

Potential for tighter constraints on Lorentz invariance violations

Abstract

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.