Long-range forces and the Eoetvoes experiment

We present here the details of our reanalysis of the experiment of Eoetvoes, Pekar, and Fekete (EPF). After outlining our motivation for reexamining the EPF paper, we review the history of this experiment, which is described in some detail. A phenomenological framework is developed for describing the EPF and other similar experiments, and this then applied to analyzing the EPF data. We show that these data evidence a strong correlation between the measured fractional acceleration differences of various sample pairs of materials and the corresponding differences of baryon number-to-mass ratios. Such a correlation can result from a coupling of the test masses to an intermediate-range field whose source is baryon number, and it is shown that the properties of this field which emerge from geophysical data provide a fair description of the EPF results. We further demonstrate that no other known mechanism either conventional or otherwise, provides an adequate explanation of these data. Various experiments to check the EPF results are described, and in the Appendix we analyze the effects of local mass inhomogeneities which appear to represent the dominant sources in Eoetvoes-like experiments. copyright 1988 Academic Press, Inc