PT1 - Space Tests of Relativity |
Speaker_ |
Tobar, Michael |
Co-autors |
Paul Stanwix, Alison Fowler, Eugene Ivanov, John Hartnett, Clayton Locke |
Talk _ |
Precision microwave measurements to test Lorentz Invariance |
Abstract _ |
We present recent and new experiments to test Local Lorentz Invariance (LLI) at the University of Western Australia. This includes the latest results of a continuously rotating cryogenic microwave oscillator. Initial results from this experiment improved limits set by previous non-rotating experiments by more than a factor of 7 with only 3 months of data. Now, with over 12 months of data, we have reduced the noise floor by a factor of 2. Also, we present a new experiment that is sensitive to the scalar and parity-odd coefficients for Lorentz violation in the photon sector of the Standard Model Extension (SME) of particle physics. To do this, we are developing a high precision microwave interferometer with different electromagnetic properties in the two arms. With present technology we estimate that the scalar and parity odd coefficients may be measured at sensitivity better than parts in 10^11 and 10^15 respectively, which represents six orders of magnitude improvement in the former and four orders for the latter. |