Constraints on a fifth force from the stellar orbits around the central supermassive black hole of the Milky Way

TL;DR

This study constrains the possible strength and range of a hypothetical fifth force near the Galactic Center by analyzing stellar orbits, especially the S2 star, using Yukawa gravity models and observational data.

Contribution

It introduces a method to constrain fifth force parameters at the Galactic Center by fitting simulated orbits to observations with MCMC, considering different force ranges.

Findings

Fifth force strength increases with its range.

Results are consistent with previous studies and other models.

Fifth force effects are compatible with observed stellar precession within errors.

Abstract

Here we investigate a possible presence of a fifth force at the Galactic Center (GC), and its potential influence on the stellar orbits around the central supermassive black hole of our Galaxy. For this purpose we simulated the stellar orbits in a Yukawa gravity model that predicts the emergence of a fifth force, and fitted them into the observed orbit of S2 star around Sgr A* at the GC. The fitting was performed using Markov chain Monte Carlo method which enabled us to constrain the parameters of Yukawa interaction describing the strength $\delta$ and the range $\lambda$ of a fifth force. We studied the following cases for a fifth force range $\lambda$, when it is: i) about a few hundred AU (i.e. deep inside the orbit of S2 star), ii) about a thousand AU (i.e. approximately the size of S2 star orbit), and iii) several thousand AU (i.e. much larger than the size of S2 star orbit). The obtained results showed that as the range $\lambda$ of a fifth force increases, its strength $\delta$ also increases and relative error $\Delta\delta/\delta$ decreases. The resulting fifth-force strengths in all three cases are respectively: $\delta\sim$ 0.005, 0.02 and 0.15. These results are consistent with the corresponding results of both our previous studies and those of other authors, regardless of the different Yukawa-like potentials used to model a fifth force. In addition, we also studied whether the possible small discrepancies from the prediction of General Relativity for the Schwarzschild precession of S2 star could be caused by a fifth force. For this purpose we used the $f_\mathrm{SP}$ parameter that was recently measured in the case of S2 star by GRAVITY Collaboration in 2020. We found that the obtained estimates in all three cases are compatible, within the error intervals, with the measured value of $f_\mathrm{SP} = 1.10\pm 0.19$.