Test of constancy of speed of light with rotating cryogenic optical resonators

Abstract

A test of Lorentz invariance for electromagnetic waves was performed by comparing the resonance frequencies of two optical resonators as a function of orientation in space. In terms of the Robertson-Mansouri-Sexl theory, we obtain ␤ − ␦ −1/2=͑+0.5± 3 ± 0.7͒ ϫ 10 −10 , a tenfold improvement compared to the previous best results. We also set a first upper limit for a parameter of the standard model extension test theory, ͉͑ e− ͒ ZZ ͉ Ͻ 2 ϫ 10 −14 .

Tests of Relativity by Complementary Rotating Michelson-Morley Experiments

“…L and n are properties of macroscopic matter and thus sensitive to Lorentz violation in the Maxwell and Dirac equations that govern its constituents. However, each of the simple MM-experiments performed so far (recently, [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]) does not by itself provide enough information to distinguish between the different influences and thus can only bound combinations of them. To remove these restrictions, experiments featuring dissimilar cavities that have a different depen- * Electronic address: holgerm@stanford.edu…”

Astrophysics in 2005

“…Thus the time machines of (or 1905or 2105? Ori 2005, as well as the violations of Lorenz invariance (Alfaro 2005), and the entities that might challenge the laws of thermodynamics (Barnich & Compere 2005) and improvements of the Michelson-Morley experiment (Antonini et al 2005) in our notebooks were relatively innocuous.…”

Lorentz violation andαdecay

“…If any anisotropy in the α-decay of 222 Rn can be ruled out with the same 10 −4 accuracy with which the total half-life is known, (25) and (26) dictate that the Lorentz violation coefficients k α may be bounded at the level |k α jk | 2 × 10 −6 (although the trace k α jj would not be constrained, since it does not lead to any anisotropy). These bounds are not very strong, especially compared with the results of atomic clock experiments, but they could give new constraints on neutron and proton c coefficients that have not been bounded in the laboratory.…”

“…Sensitive searches for Lorentz violation have included studies of matter-antimatter asymmetries for trapped charged particles [13,14,15] and bound state systems [16,17], determinations of muon properties [18,19], analyses of the behavior of spin-polarized matter [20,21], frequency standard comparisons [22,23,24,25], Michelson-Morley experiments with cryogenic resonators [26,27,28], Doppler effect measurements [29,30], measurements of neutral mesons [31,32,33,34,35,36], polarization measurements on the light from distant galaxies [37,38,39,40], high-energy astrophysical tests [41,42,43,44] and others. The results of these experiments set bounds on various SME coefficients.…”