Predrag Jovanovic, Vesna Borka Jovanovic, Dusko Borka, and Alexander F. Zakharov,
Title of the Talk: Graviton mass and Yukawa-like nonlinear correction to the gravitational potential: constraints from stellar orbits around the Galactic CenterAbstract
As the carrier of the gravitational interaction, graviton is considered to be
spin-2 (tensor) boson, electrically uncharged, as well as massless since, according
to General Relativity (GR), it travels along null geodesics at the speed of light
(like photon). However, according to some alternative theories, gravity is
propagated by a massive field, i.e. by a graviton with some small, nonzero mass.
Ever since they were first introduced in 1939 by Fierz and Pauli, such so called
theories of massive gravity have gained a significant attention due to their
ability to provide a possible explanation for the accelerated expansion of the
Universe without dark energy hypothesis, and due to important predictions that the
velocity of gravitational waves (gravitons) should depend on their frequency, as
well as that the effective gravitational potential should include a nonlinear
(exponential) correction of Yukawa form, depending on the graviton Compton
wavelength. Here we present a short overview of our investigations in which we
considered a Yukawa-like modification of the Newtonian gravitational potential in
the weak field approximation and its applications for obtaining the graviton mass
bounds from the observed stellar orbits around the central supermassive black hole
(SMBH) of our Galaxy. For that purpose we first derived the corresponding equations
of motion which appeared to be highly nonlinear due to the Yukawa correction term
in the potential, and used them to perform two-body simulations of the stellar
orbits. The simulated orbits were then fitted to the observed orbit of S2 star
around the Galactic Center in order to constrain the parameters of Yukawa gravity
(the range of Yukawa interaction $\Lambda$ and universal constant $\delta$). It was
found that the range of Yukawa interaction was on the order of several thousand
astronomical units (AU), and assuming that this parameter corresponds to the
Compton wavelength of graviton, we estimated the upper bound for graviton mass to
$m_g < 2.9 \times 10^{-21} $ eV. This estimate was not only consistent with the LIGO
estimate obtained from the first gravitational wave signal GW150914, but also it
was obtained in an independent way. For that reason, it has been since 2019
included in the "Gauge and Higgs Boson Particle Listings" published by the Particle
Data Group (PDG). We also discussed the possible influence of the bulk distribution
of matter on this estimate, as well as the possibility for its improvement with
future observations. We demonstrated that analysis of the observed stellar orbits
around the Galactic Center in the frame of the massive gravity theories represent a
very powerful tool for constraining the graviton mass and probing the GR
predictions.
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