Equivalence of Active and Passive Gravitational Mass Tested with Lunar Laser Ranging

authored by
Vishwa Vijay Singh, Jürgen Müller, Liliane Biskupek, Eva Hackmann, Claus Lämmerzahl
Abstract

Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) measures the distance between observatories on Earth and retro-reflectors on the Moon since 1969. In this Letter, we study the possible violation of the equivalence of passive and active gravitational mass (ma/mp), for aluminum (Al) and iron (Fe), using LLR data. Our new limit of 3.9×10-14 is about 100 times better than that of Bartlett and Van Buren [Equivalence of Active and Passive Gravitational Mass Using the Moon, Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 21 (1986)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.57.21] reflecting the benefit of the many years of LLR data.

Organisation(s)
Institute of Geodesy
QuantumFrontiers
External Organisation(s)
Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM)
Type
Article
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Volume
131
ISSN
0031-9007
Publication date
14.07.2023
Publication status
Published
Peer reviewed
Yes
Electronic version(s)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2212.09407 (Access: Open)
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.021401 (Access: Open)