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What effects would a finding of Gravitational Repulsion Between Matter and Anti-Matter in the ALPHA Experiment have on Mainstream Theory?

Physics Asked on August 12, 2021

The actual nature of the gravitational force between matter and anti-matter (attractive or repulsive) remains unsettled: See Are there experiments taking place right now that might show evidence for or falsify dark energy or dark matter? Assume for the sake of argument that the above cited experiment (ALPHA) (in my answer) reveals gravitational repulsion (GR) between matter and anti-matter (with the same coupling g that pertains for attraction). My questions are:

1) Could this repulsion between matter and anti-matter go all the way back to the Big Bang and provide the RG needed for the Inflationary Epoch?

2) If the answer to 1) is yes, Could the effects of RG be used to modify the remaining Big Bang time line to yield a Universe similar to what we observe today (with a dark matter web separated by voids and matter super-clusters strung out like beads on a string)? Note that an anti-matter super-cluster bound by gravity would have exactly the same electromagnetic spectral characteristics as a normal matter super-cluster and would have the same association with dark matter if the dark matter particle were its own anti-particle and were attracted equally by both normal matter and anti-matter via gravitation.

3) The equivalence principle (EP) of general relativity would not survive. Could a revised classical theory like general relativity with a reformulated EP be possible, or would a quantum field theory of general relativity be required? (Note, this has already been addressed in a comment by @CuriousOne)

4) Could this remove the need to modify the standard model to include baryon asymmetry (ie could the observed asymmetry be an artifact of the large distances between super-clusters)? We have increased the estimated size of our own super-cluster significantly in the very recent past and RG (as outlined here) could mean very little anti-matter in the local cosmic ray spectrum.

One Answer

It's hard to see how gravitational repulsion between matter and antimatter would do any of those things, (1) because gravity is weak, and (2) because matter and antimatter are intermixed in the early universe, so the matter-antimatter repulsion would be competing with matter-matter attraction and antimatter-antimatter attraction.

Answered by Mitchell Porter on August 12, 2021

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