GALACTIC-CENTER S STARS AS A PROSPECTIVE TEST OF THE EINSTEIN EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE

Galactic-center S Stars as a Prospective Test of the Einstein Equivalence Principle

The S stars in the Galactic-center region are found to be on near-perfect Keplerian orbits around presumably a supermassive black hole, with periods of 15-50 yr. Since these stars reach a few percent of light speed at pericenter, various relativistic effects are expected and have been discussed in the literature. We argue that an elegant test of the Einstein equivalence principle should be poss...

Equivalence 5 What was Einstein ' s principle of Equivalence ?

Explaining the Orbits of the Galactic Center S-stars

The young stars near the supermassive black hole at the galactic center follow orbits that are nearly random in orientation and that have an approximately “thermal” distribution of eccentricities, N(< e) ∼ e. We show that both of these properties are a natural consequence of a few million years’ interaction with an intermediate-mass black hole (IBH), if the latter’s orbit is mildly eccentric an...

Decoherence–induced violations of Einstein equivalence principle

In this essay it will be shown that Decoherence Model and Einstein Equivalence Principle are conceptually incompatible. In other words, assuming only the validity of the Weak Equivalence Principle the present work concludes that we face two possibilities: (i) if Decoherence Model provides a correct description of nature at quantum level, then there are systems which violate Local Position Invar...

New test of the Einstein equivalence principle and the isotropy of space.

Recent research has established that nonsymmetric gravitation theories like Moffat’s NGT predict that a gravitational field singles out an orthogonal pair of polarization states of light that propagate with different phase velocities. We show that a much wider class of nonmetric theories encompassed by the χg formalism predict such violations of the Einstein equivalence principle. This gravity-...