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Einstein Prize TalkExperimental Gravity: a high-sensitivity frontier of fundamental physics

ORAL · Invited

Abstract

Modern attempts to unify gravity with the rest of physics have opened the possibility that new gravitational and/or particle phenomena, hidden from us by their extreme feebleness, have gone undetected. The University of Washington Eöt-Wash group has developed ultra-sensitive torsion-balance technology to investigate this unexplored terrain. I will discuss the challenges, the new instrumentation and analysis techniques, and some of the results from this work. I will focus on tests of the weak equivalence principle (new interactions weaker than gravity, the gravitational properties of dark-matter and of anti-matter) and the study of gravity at separations smaller than the diameter of a human hair (could the extraordinary weakness of gravity be explained if some of string theories extra space dimensions were curled up at the sub-mm scale?).

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Publication: "Search for an Intermediate Range Interaction," C.W. Stubbs, E.G. Adelberger, F.J.<br>Raab, J.H. Gundlach, B.R. Heckel, K.D. McMurry, H.E. Swanson, and R. Watanabe,<br>Physical Review Letters 58, 1070 (1987).<br><br>"Experimental Bounds on Interactions Mediated by Ultra{Low Mass Bosons," B.R.<br>Heckel, E.G. Adelberger, C.W. Stubbs, Y. Su, H.E. Swanson, G. Smith, and W.F.<br>Rogers, Physical Review Letters 63, 2705 (1989).<br><br>"Testing the Equivalence Principle in the Field of the Earth: Particle Physics at Mass<br>Scales Below 1 microeV?", E.G. Adelberger, C.W. Stubbs, B.R. Heckel, Y. Su, H.E. Swanson,<br>G. Smith, J.H. Gundlach, and W.F. Rogers, Physical Review D 42, 3267 (1990).<br><br>"Sub-millimeter test of the gravitational inverse-square law: A search for "large" extra<br>dimensions", C.D. Hoyle, U. Schmidt, B.R. Heckel, E.G. Adelberger, J.H. Gundlach,<br>D.J .Kapner, and H.E. Swanson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1418 (2001).<br><br>"Sub-millimeter test of the gravitational inverse-square law: A search for \large" extra<br>dimensions", C.D. Hoyle, U. Schmidt, B.R. Heckel, E.G. Adelberger, J.H. Gundlach,<br>D.J .Kapner, and H.E. Swanson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1418 (2001).<br><br>"Tests of the Gravitational Inverse-Square Law at the Dark-Energy Length Scale",<br>D.J. Kapner, T.S. Cook, E.G. Adelberger, J.H. Gundlach, B.R. Heckel, C.D. Hoyle<br>and H.E. Swanson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 021101 (2007).<br><br>"Torsion Balance Experiments: A Low-energy Frontier of Particle Physics", E.G. Adelberger,<br>J.H. Gundlach, B.R. Heckel, S. Hoedl and S. Schlamminger, Progress in Particle<br>and Nuclear Physics 62, 102 (2009).<br><br>"Torsion-balance tests of the weak equivalence principle", T. A. Wagner, S. Schlamminger,<br>J. H. Gundlach and E. G. Adelberger, Classical and Quantum Gravity 29,<br>184002 (2012).<br><br>"New Test of the Gravitational 1/r2 Law at Separations Down to 52 microm", J.G. Lee,<br>E.G. Adelberger, T.S. Cook, S.M. Fleischer and B.R. Heckel, Physical Review Letters<br>124 101101 (2020).

Presenters

  • Eric G Adelberger

    University of Washington

Authors

  • Eric G Adelberger

    University of Washington