Testing Einstein's equivalence principle near a supermassive black hole
MARCH 29, 2019 FEATURE
by Ingrid Fadelli , Phys.org
Image of the Galactic Centre. Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO).
The GRAVITY Collaboration, a team of researchers at several renowned institutes including the Max Planck Institute, LESIA Paris Observatory and the European Southern Observatory, has recently tested part of the Einstein Equivalence Principle, namely the local positon invariance (LPI), near the galactic center supermassive black hole. Their study, published on Physics Review Letters (PRL), investigated the dependency of different atomic transitions on the gravitational potential in order to give an upper limit on LPI violations.
"General relativity and in general all metric theories of gravity are based on the equivalence of inertial mass and gravitational mass, formalized in the Einstein equivalence principle," Maryam Habibi, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. "General relativity is the best theory of gravity that we have, however, there are still many unanswered puzzles that are closely tied to our incomplete understanding of gravity."
The equivalence principle, a crucial part of Einstein's general relativity theory, states that the gravitational force experienced in any small region of space-time is the same as the pseudo-force experienced by an observer in an accelerated frame of reference. Testing this principle is of key importance, as it could lead to interesting observations and broaden our current understanding of gravity.
"Einstein's equivalence principle consists of three main principles," Habibi explained. "One of them, called the local position invariance (LPI), states that non-gravitational measurements should be independent of the location in space time (characterized by gravitational potential) where they are carried out. The main part of our study focuses on testing the LPI principle."
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