Equivalence of Active and Passive Gravitational Mass Tested with Lunar Laser Ranging

Vishwa Vijay Singh; Jürgen Müller; Liliane Biskupek; Eva Hackmann; Claus Lämmerzahl

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.021401

Equivalence of Active and Passive Gravitational Mass Tested with Lunar Laser Ranging

Phys Rev Lett. 2023 Jul 14;131(2):021401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.021401.

Authors

Vishwa Vijay Singh¹, Jürgen Müller¹, Liliane Biskupek¹, Eva Hackmann², Claus Lämmerzahl²

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Geodesy (IfE), Leibniz University Hannover, Schneiderberg 50, 30167 Hannover, Germany.
² Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), University of Bremen, Am Fallturm, 28359 Bremen, Germany.

PMID: 37505941
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.021401

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 (m_{a}/m_{p}), 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)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.57.21] reflecting the benefit of the many years of LLR data.