15 May 2023
The Earth-Moon system has become a laboratory since the first lunar laser ranges during summer 1969. Indeed, the measure of the time of flight of photons between a station on Earth and a retro-reflector at the surface of the Moon, realizes a time series of data spanning more than 50 years (from 1969 to date) with a centimetric precision on the Earth-Moon distance. Such a precision on the monitoring of the evolution of the distance between the Earth and its natural satellite reveals tiny effects due to the spacetime symmetries (cf. figure 1).
Our team was able to analyze the precise lunar laser ranging data in the framework of the SME formalism and to confirm that spacetime is such as predicted by general relativity, namely it satisfies the Lorentz and CPT symmetries. We were thus able to test three different facets of the SME formalism and we showed that the data are coherent with the predictions of Einstein’s theory with relative precision at the order of 10^-12.
Literature
- A. Bourgoin, A. Hees, S. Bouquillon, C. Le Poncin-Lafitte, G. Francou, et M.-C. Angonin. Testing Lorentz Symmetry with Lunar Laser Ranging. PRL 117, 241301, 2016.
- A. Bourgoin, C. Le Poncin-Lafitte, A. Hees, S. Bouquillon, G. Francou, et M.-C. Angonin. Lorentz Symmetry Violations from Matter-Gravity Couplings with Lunar Laser Ranging. PRL 119, 201102, 2017.
- A. Bourgoin, S. Bouquillon, A. Hees, C. Le Poncin-Lafitte, Q. G. Bailey, J. J. Howard, M.-C. Angonin, G. Francou, J. Chabé, C. Courde, et J.-M. Torre. Constraining velocity dependent Lorentz and CPT violations using lunar laser ranging. PRD 103, 064055, 2021.