Toward improving the accuracy of testing the equivalence of the inertial and the gravitational mass under terrestrial conditions

An experiment aimed at testing the equivalence of the inertial and the gravitational mass is considered in which use is made of a facility including a vacuum chamber with two coupled oscillators (a pendulum and dynamical damper that form a vibrational system featuring two degrees of freedom) and falling onto the Sun. The layout of the facility and its basic parameters are presented. The pendulum and the dynamical damper have the same natural frequency, which is equal to the frequency of their rotation about the Sun. This frequency is dependent on the date of the experiment and can be calculated on the basis of the time equation. In the proposed facility, the amplitude of oscillations of the damper is 1.2 x 10-5 rad, which is much greater than the value of 10-7 rad previously achieved in the experiment that tested the equivalence principle to the highest precision of about 10-12. This precision can be considerably improved. The result is presented that was obtained from a measurement during the solar eclipse in Moscow on August 11, 1999