Constraints on short-range gravity with self-gravitating Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

In this work, we study low-lying collective excitations of a Bose-Einstein condensate with Newtonian and Yukawa-like two-particle interaction and derive boundaries for both Yukawa parameters. Using a variational approach, we explicitly show for spherical condensate that the corresponding frequencies depend on the gravitational interaction strength. The acquired results are presented in contour plots and compared to experimentally verified data from other tests. Furthermore, we discuss experimental requirements to test our theoretical model as well as possibilities to improve the boundaries. In addition, we consider axisymmetric condensates, where it turns out that disk-shaped BECs lead to better constraints. We also show that in theory we can determine the values for both Yukawa parameters independently by a measurement of at least two collective frequencies.