Experimental Hint for Gravitational CP Violation

Abstract

An equality of particle and antiparticle gravitational interactions holds in general relativity and is supported by indirect observations. Gravity dependence on rotation or spin direction is experimentally constrained for non-relativistic matter. Here, a method based on high-energy Compton scattering is developed to measure the gravitational interaction of accelerated charged particles. Within that formalism, the Compton spectra measured at HERA rule out the speculated anti-gravity possibility for antimatter at a confidence level close to 100%. The same data, however, imply a gravitational CP violation around 13 GeV energies, by a maximal amount of (9±2)⋅10−12 for the charge and (13±3)⋅10−12 for the space parity. The detected asymmetry hints for a stronger gravitational coupling to left helicity electrons relative to right helicity positrons