Search

Without stating any assumptions or making postulates we show that the electromagnetic quantum vacuum plays a primary role in quantum electrodynamics, particle physics, gravitation and cosmology. Photons are local oscillations of the electromagnetic quantum vacuum field guided by a non-local vector potential wave function. The electron-positron elementary charge emerges naturally from the vacuum field and is related to the photon vector potential. We establish the masse-charge equivalence relation showing that the masses of all particles (leptons, mesons, baryons) and antiparticles have electromagnetic origin. In addition, we deduce that the gravitational constant G is an intrinsic property of the electromagnetic quantum vacuum putting in evidence the electromagnetic nature of gravity. We show that Newton’s gravitational law is equivalent to Coulomb’s electrostatic law. Furthermore, we draw that G is the same for matter and antimatter but gravitational forces could be repulsive between particles and antiparticles because their masses bear naturally opposite signs. The electromagnetic quantum vacuum field may be the natural link between particle physics, quantum electrodynamics, gravitation and cosmology constituting a basic step towards a unified field theory.

\hspace{2,0cm}{{\bf A tribute to Martinus Veltman 1931-2021}} Martinus ("Tini") Veltman 's early contributions to the Standard Model were essential for its succes. After some nostalgic reminiscences, I turn to the Standard Model with a minimalistic attitude, the point of view that beyond the SM there is only the Planck scale. Known since long, the gravitational force can be obtained as the gauge theory of local Poincar\'e symmetry, called gauge gravity. This gauge theory of gravity embodies {\it per se} a Palatini formulation. This causes the potential of non-minimally coupled Higgs inflation to have an intriguing improved large field behaviour. Some of its effects are experimentally accessible or refutable. The question of quantum corrections is discussed., Comment: submitted to Acta Physica Polonica. Some cosmetic changes and typos corrected

From the experimental point of view, very little is known about the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter. In particular, the Weak Equivalence Principle, which is of paramount importance for the General Relativity, has not yet been directly probed with antimatter. The main goal of the AEgIS experiment at CERN is to perform a direct measurement of the gravitational force on antimatter. The idea is to measure the vertical displacement of a beam of cold antihydrogen atoms, traveling in the gravitational field of the Earth, by the means of a moiré deflectometer. An overview of the physics goals of the experiment, of its apparatus and of the first results is presented.

A change in gravity law in some regimes is predicted in the modified gravity models that are actively discussed at present. In this paper, we consider a possibility that the signal recorded by the Geograv resonant gravitational-wave detector in 1987 during the explosion of SN 1987A was produced by an abrupt change in the metric during the passage of a strong neutrino flux through the detector. Such an impact on the detector is possible, in particular, in extended scalar-tensor theories in which the local matter density gradient affects the gravitational force. The first short neutrino pulse emitted at the initial stage of stellar core collapse before the onset of neutrino opacity could exert a major influence on the detector by exiting the detector response at the main resonance frequency. In contrast, the influence of the subsequent broad pulse (with a duration of several seconds) in the resonant detector is exponentially suppressed, despite the fact that the second pulse carries an order-of-magnitude more neutrino energy, and it could generate a signal in the LSD neutrino detector. This explains the time delay of 1.4s between the Geograv and LSD signals. The consequences of this effect of modified gravity for LIGO/Virgo observations are discussed., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, minor corrections in the text with respect to the published version

International audience; Studies of antimatter are important for understanding our universe at a fundamental level. There are still unsolved problems, such as the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. The AEgIS experiment at CERN aims at measuring the gravitational fall of antihydrogen in order to determine the gravitational force on antimatter. The proposed method will make use of a position-sensitive detector to measure the annihilation point of antihydrogen. Such a detector must be able to tag the antiproton, measure its time of arrival and reconstruct its annihilation point with high precision in the vertical direction. This work explores a new method for tagging antiprotons and reconstructing their annihilation point. Antiprotons from the Antiproton Decelerator at CERN were used to obtain data on direct annihilations on the surface of a silicon pixel sensor with Timepix3 readout. These data were used to develop and verify a detector response model for annihilation of antiprotons in this detector. Using this model and the antiproton data it is shown that a tagging efficiency of 50± 10% and a vertical position resolution of 22 ± 0.5 μm can be obtained.

We describe scalar-bimetric theories where the dynamics of the Universe are governed by two separate metrics, each with an Einstein-Hilbert term. In this setting, the baryonic and dark matter components of the Universe couple to metrics which are constructed as functions of these two gravitational metrics. The scalar field, contrary to dark energy models, does not have a potential whose role is to mimic a late-time cosmological constant. The late-time acceleration of the expansion of the Universe can be easily obtained at the background level in these models by appropriately choosing the coupling functions appearing in the decomposition of the vierbeins for the baryonic and dark matter metrics. We explicitly show how the concordance model can be retrieved with negligible scalar kinetic energy. This requires the scalar coupling functions to show variations of order unity during the accelerated expansion era. This leads in turn to deviations of order unity for the effective Newton constants and a fifth force that is of the same order as Newtonian gravity, with peculiar features. The baryonic and dark matter self-gravities are amplified although the gravitational force between baryons and dark matter is reduced and even becomes repulsive at low redshift. This slows down the growth of baryonic density perturbations on cosmological scales, while dark matter perturbations are enhanced. In our local environment, the upper bound on the time evolution of Newton's constant requires an efficient screening mechanism that both damps the fifth force on small scales and decouples the local value of Newton constant from its cosmological value. This cannot be achieved by a quasi-static chameleon mechanism, and requires going beyond the quasi-static regime and probably using derivative screenings, such as Kmouflage or Vainshtein screening, on small scales., 35 pages

The efficient production of cold antihydrogen atoms in particle traps at CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator has opened up the possibility of performing direct measurements of the Earth’s gravitational acceleration on purely antimatter bodies. The goal of the AEgIS collaboration is to measure the value of g for antimatter using a pulsed source of cold antihydrogen and a Moiré deflectometer/Talbot–Lau interferometer. The same antihydrogen beam is also very well suited to measuring precisely the ground-state hyperfine splitting of the anti-atom. The antihydrogen formation mechanism chosen by AEgIS is resonant charge exchange between cold antiprotons and Rydberg positronium. A series of technical developments regarding positrons and positronium (Ps formation in a dedicated room-temperature target, spectroscopy of the n =1–3 and n =3–15 transitions in Ps, Ps formation in a target at 10 K inside the 1 T magnetic field of the experiment) as well as antiprotons (high-efficiency trapping of , radial compression to sub-millimetre radii of mixed plasmas in 1 T field, high-efficiency transfer of to the antihydrogen production trap using an in-flight launch and recapture procedure) were successfully implemented. Two further critical steps that are germane mainly to charge exchange formation of antihydrogen—cooling of antiprotons and formation of a beam of antihydrogen—are being addressed in parallel. The coming of ELENA will allow, in the very near future, the number of trappable antiprotons to be increased by more than a factor of 50. For the antihydrogen production scheme chosen by AEgIS, this will be reflected in a corresponding increase of produced antihydrogen atoms, leading to a significant reduction of measurement times and providing a path towards high-precision measurements. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Antiproton physics in the ELENA era’.

Coherent oscillation of axions or axion-like particles may give rise to long-lived clumps, called axion stars, because of the attractive gravitational force or its self-interaction. Such a kind of configuration has been extensively studied in the context of oscillons without the effect of gravity, and its stability can be understood by an approximate conservation of particle number in a non-relativistic effective field theory (EFT). We extend this analysis to the case with gravity to discuss the longevity of axion stars and clarify the EFT expansion scheme in terms of gradient energy and Newton's constant. Our EFT is useful to calculate the axion star configuration and its classical lifetime without any ad hoc assumption. In addition, we derive a simple stability condition against small perturbations. Finally, we discuss the consistency of other non-relativistic effective field theories proposed in the literature.

International audience; The ongoing improvements of the advanced gravitational wave (GW) detectors are setting challenging requirements on instrument calibration. We report tests of a calibration technique, based on the well-known gravitational force, which has been applied for the first time on a large interferometer. The results obtained with Advanced Virgo are in good agreement with the predictions and with the usual calibration method. This technique is expected to lead to accurate absolute calibration at the sub-percent level in the coming years, matching the needs of the rapidly evolving GW science.

Scientific reports 8, 10828 (2018). doi:10.1038/s41598-018-29022-4, Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) are processes where stars are torn apart by the strong gravitational force near to a massive or supermassive black hole. If a jet is launched in such a process, particle acceleration may take place in internal shocks. We demonstrate that jetted TDEs can simultaneously describe the observed neutrino and cosmic ray fluxes at the highest energies if stars with heavier compositions, such as carbon-oxygen white dwarfs, are tidally disrupted and these events are sufficiently abundant. We simulate the photo-hadronic interactions both in the TDE jet and in the propagation through the extragalactic space and we show that the simultaneous description of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray (UHECR) and PeV neutrino data implies that a nuclear cascade in the jet is developed by photo-hadronic interactions., Published by Nature Publishing Group, London