Proposed Experiments to Test the Unified Description of Gravitation and Electromagnetism through a Symmetric Metric

Abstract

If gravitation and electromagnetism are both described in terms of a symmetric metric tensor, then the deflection of an electron beam by a charged sphere should be different from its deflection according to the Reissner-Nordstr\"om solution of General Relativity. If such a unified description is true, the equivalence principle for the electric field implies that the photon has a nonzero effective electric charge-to-mass ratio and should be redshifted in an electric field and be deflected in a magnetic field. Experiments to test these predictions are proposed.