Leipzig 2002 – scientific programme
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GR: Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie
GR 12: Experimentelle Tests
GR 12.1: Fachvortrag
Friday, March 22, 2002, 10:30–11:00, HS 20
Verifying the Foundations of Relativity — •Claus Braxmaier1, Holger Müller1, Sven Herrmann1, Claus Lämmerzahl2, Stephan Schiller2, Jürgen Mlynek3, and Achim Peters1 — 1Fachbereich Physik, Universität Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz — 2Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf — 3Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin
Within the quest for a unification and quantization of all forces of nature, significant efforts are made to test the foundations underlying today’s theories, in particular General and Special Relativity. We report on three different tests of Relativity: (i) a test of the isotropy of the speed of light (Michelson-Morley experiment), (ii) a test of the independence of the speed of light from the velocity of the laboratory (Kennedy-Thorndike experiment), and (iii) a test of the universality of the gravitational clock redshift for an electronic transition. These three tests, using cryogenic optical resonators (COREs) as length standard and molecule iodine as time standard, yielded improvements of the best previous tests by up to a factor of three [1,2]. The potential for future improvements, terrestrial and space-based, will be discussed.
[1] C. Braxmaier et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, No.1 (2002) 010401-1
[2] H. Müller et al, submitted to in J. Mod. Phys.