Bounds on gravitational parity violation using a rotating torsion pendulum with chiral masses

• Main Authors: Anaís Dorta-Urra, Pedro Bargueño
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2021-07-01
• Series: European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09392-2

Abstract In this letter we employ recent results on gravitationally induced parity violation with a rotating torsion pendulum whose test bodies are quartz enantiomers (Zhu et al. in Phys Rev Lett 121:261101, 2018) in order to estimate, using a simple model, Hari Dass’s $$\alpha _{2}$$ α 2 constant which parametrizes the strength of parity violation in the gravitational interaction. The result here obtained, $$\alpha _{2}\sim 10^{17}$$ α 2 ∼ 10 17 , is in agreement with estimations based on high resolution experiments performed using chiral molecules, showing that the Hari-Dass’s framework for spin-dependent gravity, together with our simple model, are versatile enough in order to be applied to the analysis of other experimental results involving spin-dependent gravitational effects. Interestingly, it can also be used to constrain indirectly parity-violating effects in macroscopic samples of quartz crystals due to electron–nucleon interactions.