Gravitational mass of positron from LEP synchrotron losses.

Tigran Kalaydzhyan

doi:10.1038/srep30461

Abstract

General relativity(GR) is the current description of gravity in modern physics. One of the cornerstones of GR, as well as Newton’s theory of gravity, is the weak equivalence principle (WEP), stating that the trajectory of a freely falling test body is independent of its internal structure and composition. WEP is known to be valid for the normal matter with a high precision. However, due to the rarity of antimatter and weakness of the gravitational forces, the WEP has never been confirmed for antimatter. The current direct bounds on the ratio between the gravitational and inertial masses of the antihydrogen do not rule out a repulsive nature for the antimatter gravity. Here we establish an indirect bound of 0.13% on the difference between the gravitational and inertial masses of the positron (antielectron) from the analysis of synchrotron losses at the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP). This serves as a confirmation of the conventional gravitational properties of antimatter without common assumptions such as, e.g., coupling of gravity to virtual particles, dynamics of distant astrophysical sources and the nature of absolute gravitational potentials.

Highlights

General relativity(GR) is the current description of gravity in modern physics
We establish an indirect bound of 0.13% on the difference between the gravitational and inertial masses of the positron from the analysis of synchrotron losses at the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP)
This serves as a confirmation of the conventional gravitational properties of antimatter without common assumptions such as, e.g., coupling of gravity to virtual particles, dynamics of distant astrophysical sources and the nature of absolute gravitational potentials

Summary

LEP synchrotron losses

Tigran Kalaydzhyan[1,2] received: 15 November 2015 accepted: 06 July 2016 Published: 27 July 2016. We establish an indirect bound of 0.13% on the difference between the gravitational and inertial masses of the positron (antielectron) from the analysis of synchrotron losses at the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP). This serves as a confirmation of the conventional gravitational properties of antimatter without common assumptions such as, e.g., coupling of gravity to virtual particles, dynamics of distant astrophysical sources and the nature of absolute gravitational potentials. Direct observation of cold-trapped antihydrogen[7] by the ALPHA collaboration at CERN sets the limits on the ratio between the gravitational, mg, and inertial, m, masses of the antihydrogen, −65

Theory in brief

Σm Σ coefficients Σm

Analysis of the experiment

Results

Additional Information