• Open Access

Acoustic Tests of Lorentz Symmetry Using Quartz Oscillators

Anthony Lo, Philipp Haslinger, Eli Mizrachi, Loïc Anderegg, Holger Müller, Michael Hohensee, Maxim Goryachev, and Michael E. Tobar
Phys. Rev. X 6, 011018 – Published 24 February 2016

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a test of Lorentz symmetry based on new, compact, and reliable quartz oscillator technology. Violations of Lorentz invariance in the matter and photon sector of the standard model extension generate anisotropies in particles’ inertial masses and the elastic constants of solids, giving rise to measurable anisotropies in the resonance frequencies of acoustic modes in solids. A first realization of such a “phonon-sector” test of Lorentz symmetry using room-temperature stress-compensated-cut crystals yields 120 h of data at a frequency resolution of 2.4×1015 and a limit of c˜Qn=(1.8±2.2)×1014GeV on the most weakly constrained neutron-sector c coefficient of the standard model extension. Future experiments with cryogenic oscillators promise significant improvements in accuracy, opening up the potential for improved limits on Lorentz violation in the neutron, proton, electron, and photon sector.

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  • Received 8 December 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.6.011018

This article is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Anthony Lo, Philipp Haslinger, Eli Mizrachi, Loïc Anderegg, and Holger Müller*

  • Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

Michael Hohensee

  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550, USA

Maxim Goryachev and Michael E. Tobar

  • ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, School of Physics, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western Australia 6009, Australia

  • *hm@berkeley.edu
  • Also at Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

Popular Summary

The theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity have experienced great experimental successes, but these theories coexist as incompatible. However, different theoretical frameworks of unification allow, or even predict, small Lorentz invariance violation, that is, a violation of the paradigm that experimental results do not depend on orientation in space or velocity of the laboratory apparatus. Here, we attempt to uncover experimental evidence of Lorentz invariance violation by conducting precision frequency measurements of acoustic oscillations in quartz oscillators.

Using standard, robust, room-temperature technology, we set a quartz crystal rotating at roughly 0.3 Hz. We employ quartz crystals because they are largely unaffected by wobbling and tilting, and we study the crystal’s motion to look for physics not explained by the standard model. The crystal in our study is oscillating at 10 MHz, and our experiment is designed to measure deviations in oscillation frequency as a function of rotation, which would imply changes in inertial mass of the atoms making up the crystals. We shield our entire setup to minimize the effects of magnetic fields, and we collect roughly 120 hours’ worth of data. We find no evidence for Lorentz-violating anisotropies down to a level of roughly 1014  GeV, thus verifying the overall isotropy of inertial masses of neutrons to 6 orders of magnitude higher precision than any previous direct laboratory experiment. We also discuss how future cryogenic quartz oscillators may make an additional 4 orders of magnitude improvement possible.

We expect that our findings will pave the way for improved tests of Lorentz invariance of neutrons, protons, electrons, and photons.

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Vol. 6, Iss. 1 — January - March 2016

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