Constraint on the fifth force through perihelion precession of planets

TL;DR

This paper proposes using planetary perihelion precession data to set strong constraints on the possible fifth force associated with dark matter, leveraging high observational accuracy and matter composition differences.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to constrain the dark matter fifth force using planetary perihelion precession, achieving some of the strongest current limits.

Findings

High-precision perihelion precession data constrains the fifth force of dark matter.

The method yields constraints stronger than previous approaches.

Future BepiColombo mission will improve these constraints by an order of magnitude.

Abstract

The equivalence principle is important in fundamental physics. The fifth force, as a describing formalism of the equivalence principle, may indicate the property of an unknown theory. Dark matter is one of the most mysterious objects in the current natural science. It is interesting to constrain the fifth force of dark matter. We propose a new method to use perihelion precession of planets to constrain the long-range fifth force of dark matter. Due to the high accuracy of perihelion precession observation, and the large difference of matter composition between the Sun and planets, we get one of the strongest constraints on the fifth force of dark matter. In the near future, the BepiColombo mission will be capable to improve the test by another factor of ten.