A comment on the new non-conventional gravitational mechanism proposed by Jaekel and Reynaud to accommodate the Pioneer anomaly

TL;DR

This paper tests a gravitational mechanism proposed to explain the Pioneer anomaly, finding it inconsistent with planetary observations and thus unlikely to be the correct explanation.

Contribution

It critically evaluates a recent non-conventional gravitational model for the Pioneer anomaly against observational data, ruling out certain proposed potentials.

Findings

The proposed quadratic potential causes large perihelion shifts incompatible with observations.

The linear potential is ruled out by residual perihelion rate measurements.

The gravitational mechanism cannot account for the Pioneer anomaly without conflicting with planetary data.

Abstract

In this paper we put on the test the new mechanism of gravitational origin recently put forth by Jaekel and Reynaud in order to explain the Pioneer anomaly in the framework of their post-Einsteinian metric extension of general relativity. According to such a proposal, the secular part of the anomalous acceleration experienced by the twin spacecraft of about 1 nm s^-2 could be caused by an extra-potential \delta\Phi_P=c^2\chi r^2, with \chi=4 10^-8 AU^-2, coming from the second sector of the considered model. When applied to the motion of the planets of the Solar System, it would induce anomalous secular perihelion advances which amount to tens-hundreds of arcseconds per century for the outer planets. As for other previously proposed non-conventional gravitational explanations of the Pioneer anomaly, the answer of the latest observational determinations of the residual perihelion rates by RAS IAA is neatly and unambiguously negative. The presence of another possible candidate to explain the Pioneer anomaly, i.e. the extra-potential \delta\Phi_N, linear in distance, from the first sector of the Jaekel and Reynaud model, is ruled out not only by the residuals of the optical data of the outer planets processed with the recent RAS IAA EPM2004 ephemerides but also by those produced with other, older dynamical theories like, e.g., the well known NASA JPL DE200.