Mansouri-Sexl Test for Light Speed Anisotropy via Cosmic Aberration

ABSTRACT

The Mansouri-Sexl theory is a well known test theory of relativity. In the current paper we will derive the Mansouri- Sexl formalism for the light aberration and we will show how to improve on the theoretical and experimental basis by constraining both the Mansouri-Sexl parameter a(v ) and the parameter b(v ) . In the process of constraining the Mansouri parameters we devise a novel experiment for measuring and constraining light speed anisotropy as well. An overwhelming number of experiments dealing with light speed anisotropy are laboratory-bound and they are limited to constraining only parameter a(v ) ; we will also take the approach of setting up an astronomical experiment instead of a labbased one as it befits the relativistic aberration effect. Our paper is organized as follows: in the first section we give a new and more complete derivation of the Mansouri-Sexl aberration effect. In the second part, we apply the newly expanded Mansouri-Sexl aberration formalism in order to devise an astronomical experiment used for constraining both the parameter a(v ) and the parameter b(v ) . This turns the Mansouri-Sexl aberration experiment into a very powerful tool for constraining light speed anisotropy.

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