Solar and stellar system tests of the cosmological constant

Abstract

Some tests of gravity theories---periastron shift, geodetic precession, change in mean motion and gravitational redshift---are applied in solar and stellar systems to constrain the cosmological constant. We thus consider a length scale range from $\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{8}$ to $\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{15}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{km}$. Best bounds from the solar system come from perihelion advance and change in mean motion of Earth and Mars, $\ensuremath{\Lambda}\ensuremath{\lesssim}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}36}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{km}}^{\ensuremath{-}2}$. Such a limit falls very short to estimates from observational cosmology analyses but a future experiment performing radio ranging observations of outer planets could improve it by 4 orders of magnitude. Beyond the solar system, together with future measurements of periastron advance in wide binary pulsars, gravitational redshift of white dwarfs can provide bounds competitive with Mars data.