The Equivalence Principle and the Moon

Abstract

The perturbation of the lunar motion caused by a hypothetical violation of the equivalence principle is analytically worked out in terms of power series à la Hill-Brown. The interaction with the quadrupolar tide is found to amplify the leading order term in the synodic range oscillation by more than 62\%. Confirming a recent suggestion of Nordtvedt, we find that this amplification has a pole singularity for an orbit beyond the lunar orbit. This singularity is shown to correspond to the critical prograde orbit beyond which, as found by Hénon, Hill's periodic orbit becomes exponentially unstable. It is suggested that ranging between prograde and retrograde orbits around outer planets might provide future high precision orbital tests of the equivalence principle. It is argued that, within the context of string-derived non-Einsteinian theories, the theoretical significance of orbital tests of the universality of free fall is to measure the basic coupling strength of some scalar field through composition-dependent effects. Present Lunar Laser Ranging data yield the value $\barγ = (-1.2\pm 1.7) \times 10^{-7}$ for the effective Eddington parameter $\barγ \equiv γ-1$ measuring this coupling strength.