Antimatter gravity and the Universe

Abstract

The aim of this brief review is twofold. First, we give an overview of the unprecedented experimental efforts to measure the gravitational acceleration of antimatter; with antihydrogen in three competing experiments at CERN (AEGIS, ALPHA and GBAR, and with muonium and positronium in other laboratories in the world. Second, we present the 21st Century's attempts to develop a new model of the Universe with the assumed gravitational repulsion between matter and antimatter; so far, three radically different and incompatible theoretical paradigms have been proposed. Two of these 3 models, Dirac-Milne Cosmology (that incorporates CPT violation) and the Lattice Universe (based on CPT symmetry) assume a symmetric Universe composed of equal amounts of matter and antimatter, with antimatter somehow "hidden" in cosmic voids; this hypothesis produced encouraging preliminary results. The hearth of the third model is the hypothesis that quantum vacuum fluctuations are virtual gravitational dipoles; for the first time, this hypothesis makes possible and inevitable to include the quantum vacuum as a source of gravity. Standard Model matter is considered as the only content of the Universe, while phenomena usually attributed to dark matter and dark energy are explained as the local and global effects of the gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum by the immersed baryonic matter. An additional feature is that we might live in a cyclic Universe alternatively dominated by matter and antimatter. In about three years, we will know if there is gravitational repulsion between matter and antimatter; a discovery that can forever change our understanding of the Universe.

References in corpus (26)

• The R_h = ct Universe
• Marginal evidence for cosmic acceleration from Type Ia supernovae
• CPT symmetry and antimatter gravity in general relativity
• Gravitational polarization and the phenomenology of MOND
• Model of Dark Matter and Dark Energy Based on Gravitational Polarization
• Introducing the Dirac-Milne universe
• Is cosmic acceleration proven by local cosmological probes?
• Is dark matter an illusion created by the gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum?
• Cosmological structure formation with negative mass
• Quantum Vacuum and Virtual Gravitational Dipoles: The solution to the Dark Energy Problem?
• Neutrino Lighthouse at Sagittarius A*
• Virtual gravitational dipoles: The key for the understanding of the Universe?
• On the nature of dark energy: the lattice Universe
• Gravity, antimatter and the Dirac-Milne universe
• "Dark energy" in the Local Void
• Quantum vacuum and dark matter
• Phenomenology of Dark Matter via a Bimetric Extension of General Relativity
• Do we live in the universe successively dominated by matter and antimatter?
• The matter-antimatter interpretation of Kerr spacetime
• What would be outcome of a Big Crunch?
• Dipolar Dark Matter as an Effective Field Theory
• Can observations inside the Solar System reveal the gravitational properties of the quantum vacuum?
• Phenomenology of MOND and gravitational polarization
• Gravitational anti-screening as an alternative to the LCDM model
• Can the new Neutrino Telescopes reveal the Gravitational Properties of Antimatter?
• The signatures of new physics, astrophysics and cosmology?

Cited by in corpus (4)

• What if the universe expands linearly? A local general relativity to solve the "zero active mass" problem
• Gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum caused by two point-like bodies
• Antimatter Gravity Experiments, the Astronomical Challenges to Lambda-CDM Cosmology and the Quantum Vacuum as a Possible Source of Gravity in the Universe
• Zero-Point Energy Density at the Origin of the Vacuum Permittivity and Photon Propagation Time Fluctuation