Equivalence of Active and Passive Gravitational Mass Tested with Lunar Laser Ranging
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), 10.1103/PhysRevLett.57.21] reflecting the benefit of the many years of LLR data.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- July 2023
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.021401
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2212.09407
- Bibcode:
- 2023PhRvL.131b1401S
- Keywords:
-
- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics;
- Physics - Space Physics
- E-Print:
- 4 pages, 1 figure