Constraining the Mass of the Graviton with the Planetary Ephemeris INPOP

Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Oct 18;123(16):161103. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.161103.

Abstract

We use the planetary ephemeris INPOP17b to constrain the existence of a Yukawa suppression to the Newtonian potential, generically associated with the graviton's mass. We also give an interpretation of this result for a specific case of fifth force framework. We find that the residuals for the Cassini spacecraft significantly (90% C.L.) degrade for Compton wavelengths of the graviton smaller than 1.83×10^{13} km, which correspond to a graviton mass bigger than 6.76×10^{-23} eV/c^{2}. This limit is comparable in magnitude to the one obtained by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration in the radiative regime. We also use this specific example to defend that constraints on alternative theories of gravity obtained from postfit residuals may be generically overestimated.