Probing gravity at megahertz frequencies with levitated rotors

Abstract

The near-field gravitational interaction between masses is always thought of as instantaneous, an assumption experimentally tested only up to 1.7 kHz, where measurements yield a bounds at the $10^{-5}$ s level. We propose a near-field experiment reaching up to megahertz frequencies, in which a levitated microrotor modulates a mass quadrupole and a second rotor measures the resulting gravitational tidal field as a torque. Because the detector rotor acts as a mechanical local oscillator, the megahertz signal is downconverted to a convenient band of a few hertz, and since at fixed geometry neither the torque nor the integration time depends on the rotation rate, higher frequencies are reached at no cost in sensitivity. With parameters within reach of magnetically levitated NdFeB rotors, a signal at 2 MHz yields a torque of $2\cdot 10^{-25}$ Nm, detectable in under an hour at 10 mK. Treating a possible departure from instantaneous gravitational coupling through a field relaxation time, the measured torque could constrain it at the $10^{-8}$ s level, improving on the existing bounds by more than three orders of magnitude. As a byproduct of our analysis, we derive the sensitivity of a rotor operated as a tunable high-frequency gravitational-wave detector, finding that a noise-equivalent strain around $10^{-22}$ Hz$^{-1/2}$ could be achievable in the megahertz band.