| Issue |
A&A
Volume 698, May 2025
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | L15 | |
| Number of page(s) | 6 | |
| Section | Letters to the Editor | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202554676 | |
| Published online | 06 June 2025 | |
Letter to the Editor
Exploring the presence of a fifth force at the Galactic Center
1
LIRA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France
2
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Giessenbachstraße 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
3
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, 38000 Grenoble, France
4
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
5
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
6
1st Institute of Physics, University of Cologne, Zülpicher Straße 77, 50937 Cologne, Germany
7
CENTRA – Centro de Astrofísica e Gravitação, IST, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
8
Universidade de Lisboa – Faculdade de Ciências, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
9
European Southern Observatory, Casilla, 19001 Santiago 19, Chile
10
Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
11
Departments of Physics & Astronomy, Le Conte Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
12
Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
13
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany
14
Institute of Multidisciplinary Mathematics, Universitat Politècnica de València, València, Spain
15
Center of Gravity, Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
16
ORIGINS Excellence Cluster, Boltzmannstraße 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
17
Department of Physics, Technical University of Munich, 85748 Garching, Germany
18
Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, Edinburgh, UK
19
Leiden University, 2311 EZ Leiden, The Netherlands
20
The Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
⋆⋆ Corresponding author: arianna.foschi@obspm.fr
Received:
21
March
2025
Accepted:
1
May
2025
Aims. We investigate the presence of a Yukawa-like correction to Newtonian gravity at the Galactic Center, leading to a new upper limit on the intensity of such a correction.
Methods. We performed a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis using the astrometric and spectroscopic data of star S2 collected at the Very Large Telescope by GRAVITY, NACO, and SINFONI instruments, covering the period from 1992 to 2022.
Results. The precision of the GRAVITY instrument allows us to derive the most stringent upper limit at the Galactic Center for the intensity of the Yukawa contribution (∝ αe−λr) of |α|< 0.003 for a scale length of λ = 3 ⋅ 1013 m (∼ 200 AU). This is an improvement on all estimates obtained in previous works by roughly one order of magnitude.
Key words: gravitation / celestial mechanics / Galaxy: center
© The Authors 2025
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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