Lorentz violation in a uniform newtonian gravitational field

Abstract

Lorentz invariance is one of the fundamental principles of physics, and, as such, it must be experimentally tested. The purpose of this work is to obtain, within the Standard-Model Extension, the dynamics of a Lorentz-violating spinor in a uniform newtonian gravitational field. This is achieved by treating the spinor as a test particle and introducing the gravitational field through a uniformly accelerated observer. The nonrelativistic hamiltonian is obtained and some experimental consequences are discussed. One unexpected outcome of this work is that the gravitational field helps disentangling bounds on coefficients for Lorentz violation.