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· 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.
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BibTeX
@misc{fadel2026probing,
title = {{Probing gravity at megahertz frequencies with levitated rotors}},
author = {Matteo Fadel and Andrea Vinante},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.06893},
eprint = {2611.06893},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06893},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Probing gravity at megahertz frequencies with levitated rotors
AU - Matteo Fadel
AU - Andrea Vinante
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.06893
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06893
AB - 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· 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.
ER -