Light Speed Anisotropy Constraints via Measurement of Relativistic Light Aberration

The Mansouri-Sexl theory is a well known test theory of relativity. In the current paper we will derive the Mansouri-Sexl formalism for the light aberration and we will show how to improve on the theoretical and experimental basis by constraining the Mansouri-Sexl parameter “ ”. In the process of constraining the Mansouri parameter we devise a novel experiment for measuring and constraining light speed anisotropy as well. An overwhelming number of experiments dealing with light speed anisotropy are laboratory-bound, we take the approach of setting up an astronomical experiment instead of a lab-based one as it befits the relativistic aberration effect. Our paper is organized as follows: in the first section we give a new and more complete derivation of the Mansouri-Sexl aberration effect. In the second part, we apply the newly expanded Mansouri-Sexl aberration formalism in order to devise an astronomical experiment used for constraining the parameter “ ”. This turns the Mansouri-Sexl aberration experiment into a very powerful tool for constraining light speed anisotropy.