Improved constraints on isotropic shift and anisotropies of the speed of light using rotating cryogenic sapphire oscillators
Abstract
We demonstrate that Michelson-Morley tests, which detect direction-dependent anisotropies in the speed of light, can also be used to place limits upon isotropic deviations of the vacuum speed of light from c, as described by the photon-sector standard model extension parameter κ∼tr. A shift in the speed of light that is isotropic in one inertial frame implies anisotropic shifts in others. Using observer Lorentz covariance, we derive the time-dependent variations in the relative resonance frequencies of a pair of electromagnetic resonators that would be generated by such a shift in the rest frame of the Sun. A new analysis of a recent experimental test of relativity using this result constrains κ∼tr with a precision of 7.4×10-9. This represents the first constraint on κ∼tr by a Michelson-Morley experiment and the first analysis of a single experiment to simultaneously set limits on all nine nonbirefringent terms in the photon sector of the minimal standard model extension.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review D
- Pub Date:
- October 2010
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevD.82.076001
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1006.1376
- Bibcode:
- 2010PhRvD..82g6001H
- Keywords:
-
- 03.30.+p;
- 06.30.Ft;
- 11.30.Cp;
- 12.60.-i;
- Special relativity;
- Time and frequency;
- Lorentz and Poincare invariance;
- Models beyond the standard model;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;
- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;
- Physics - Data Analysis;
- Statistics and Probability
- E-Print:
- Phys.Rev.D82:076001,2010