Physical-Vacuum Response Gravity: Newtonian Limit and Relativistic Weak-Field Tests
Abstract
Newtonian gravity is extraordinarily successful in the weak-field regime, but recovering its inversesquare law alone does not explain why the same gravitational environment also shifts clocks, bends light, delays electromagnetic signals, and drives post-Newtonian orbital precession. To address this problem, we develop Physical-Vacuum Response Gravity (PVRG), a unified effective theory on fixed Minkowski spacetime that contains both a Newtonian source mechanism and a static relativistic probe sector. Matter is represented by localized oscillatory vacuum defects whose complete backgroundsubtracted energy defines inertia and weak response. A source removes a correlated component of an otherwise isotropic directional response; scalar energy is restored through statistically backgroundized return, while the source-test directional correlation is not restored in the ideal limit. Reciprocity and universal response per unit complete mass yield an inverse-square interaction, compositionindependent free fall, and, after Planck normalization and linear superposition, the Newtonian potential and Poisson equation. The same potential then defines one dimensionless probe-response strength. Two universal temporal and spatial phase-momentum response functions are coupled to both material and electromagnetic probes. An incremental complete-energy law fixes the nonlinear temporal coefficient, while conservative vacuum-response redistribution motivates a longitudinal reciprocity condition fixing the leading spatial coefficient. The closed PVRG response reproduces the gravitational frequency shift, light deflection, Shapiro delay, and perihelion advance without observable-specific fitting. A minimal nonlinear continuation further gives a conditional second-order solar-limb-scale deflection coefficient differing from the general-relativistic benchmark by about 0.7 microarcseconds. PVRG is explicitly an effective theory at this stage: several source and probe closures still require derivation from a common microscopic vacuum-field action.
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BibTeX
@misc{gai2026physicalvacuum,
title = {{Physical-Vacuum Response Gravity: Newtonian Limit and Relativistic Weak-Field Tests}},
author = {Shaolei Gai},
howpublished = {HAL},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05739873v1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Physical-Vacuum Response Gravity: Newtonian Limit and Relativistic Weak-Field Tests
AU - Shaolei Gai
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/06
PB - HAL
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05739873v1
AB - Newtonian gravity is extraordinarily successful in the weak-field regime, but recovering its inversesquare law alone does not explain why the same gravitational environment also shifts clocks, bends light, delays electromagnetic signals, and drives post-Newtonian orbital precession. To address this problem, we develop Physical-Vacuum Response Gravity (PVRG), a unified effective theory on fixed Minkowski spacetime that contains both a Newtonian source mechanism and a static relativistic probe sector. Matter is represented by localized oscillatory vacuum defects whose complete backgroundsubtracted energy defines inertia and weak response. A source removes a correlated component of an otherwise isotropic directional response; scalar energy is restored through statistically backgroundized return, while the source-test directional correlation is not restored in the ideal limit. Reciprocity and universal response per unit complete mass yield an inverse-square interaction, compositionindependent free fall, and, after Planck normalization and linear superposition, the Newtonian potential and Poisson equation. The same potential then defines one dimensionless probe-response strength. Two universal temporal and spatial phase-momentum response functions are coupled to both material and electromagnetic probes. An incremental complete-energy law fixes the nonlinear temporal coefficient, while conservative vacuum-response redistribution motivates a longitudinal reciprocity condition fixing the leading spatial coefficient. The closed PVRG response reproduces the gravitational frequency shift, light deflection, Shapiro delay, and perihelion advance without observable-specific fitting. A minimal nonlinear continuation further gives a conditional second-order solar-limb-scale deflection coefficient differing from the general-relativistic benchmark by about 0.7 microarcseconds. PVRG is explicitly an effective theory at this stage: several source and probe closures still require derivation from a common microscopic vacuum-field action.
ER -