Searches for the role of spin and polarization in gravity: a five-year update

Abstract

Searches for the role of spin in gravitation dated before the firm establishment of the electron spin in 1925. Since mass and spin, or helicity in the case of zero mass, are the Casimir invariants of the Poincaré group and mass participates in universal gravitation, these searches are natural steps to pursue. In this update, we report on the progress on this topic in the last five years after our last review. We begin with how is Lorentz/Poincaré group in local physics arisen from spacetime structure as seen by photon and matter through experiments/observations. The cosmic verification of the Galileo Equivalence Principle for photons/electromagnetic wave packets (Universality of Propagation in spacetime independent of photon energy and polarization, i.e. nonbirefringence) constrains the spacetime constitutive tensor to high precision to a core metric form with an axion degree and a dilaton degree of freedom. Hughes-Drever-type experiments then constrain this core metric to agree with the matter metric. Thus comes the metric with axion and dilation. In local physics this metric gives the Lorentz/Poincaré covariance. Constraints on axion and dilaton from polarized/unpolarized laboratory/astrophysical/cosmic experiments/observations are presented. In the end, we review the theoretical progress on the issue of gyrogravitational ratio for fundamental particles and the experimental progress on the measurements of possible long range/intermediate range spin-spin, spin-monopole and spin-cosmos interactions.

12 pages, 2 tables; Plenary talk presented in the 21st International Symposium on Spin Physics (Spin2014), 19 October 2014 - 24 October 2014, Peking University, Beijing, China; Based partly on arXiv:1411.0460, arXiv:1410.0126 and arXiv:0912.5057

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• On Kottler's path: origin and evolution of the premetric program in gravity and in electrodynamics
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• Minimal coupling in presence of non-metricity and torsion
• New test of weak equivalence principle using polarized light from astrophysical events
• Local Lorentz transformations and Thomas effect in general relativity
• Einstein-Proca theory from the Einstein-Cartan formulation
• Equivalence Principles, Spacetime Structure and the Cosmic Connection
• Geometric multipliers and partial teleparallelism in Poincaré gauge theory
• Quantum corrected gravitational potential beyond monopole-monopole interactions