Abstract
Three recent, remarkably sharp experimental tests of local Lorentz invariance are founded on an analysis of the electrostatic structure of atoms and nuclei moving through a nonmetric gravitational field. In this paper we extend this analysis to account for hyperfine and other relativistic aspects of atomic structure. One product of this work is a new quantitative interpretation of experimental tests of local Lorentz invariance that employ hydrogen-maser clocks, clocks whose ticking rates are governed by an atomic hyperfine transition. The analytical methods developed in this paper constitute a fairly complete set of tools for studying the breakdown of local Lorentz invariance in Lagrangian-based nonmetric theories of gravitation.
- Received 18 January 1990
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.41.2943
©1990 American Physical Society