Incompatibility of QED/QCD and repulsive gravity, and implications for some recent approaches to dark energy

Abstract

The measurement of the gravitational properties of antimatter is currently a hot research area in experimental physics. Using an outcome of QED calculations by Alves et al. (arXiv:0907.4110, 2009), this letter proves that QED and repulsive gravity are incompatible by showing that an extension of QED with the assumption of negative gravitational mass for antimatter yields a concrete prediction that is already falsified by the recent Eöt-Wash experiments: if repulsive gravity, and thus negative gravitational mass, would be observed by any of the upcoming experiments, then QED is thus experimentally falsified; the same goes for QCD. An immediate consequence is that virtual particle-antiparticle pairs from contemporary quantum theory cannot be a model for Hajdukovic’s virtual gravitational dipoles, nor for the dipolar medium of Blanchet and Le Tiec. There may be ways to reformulate quantum theory to restore consistency with experiment if repulsive gravity would be observed, but these involve a departure from the framework of four dimensions and four forces of nature: an observation of repulsive gravity would thus provide a reason to reject the quantum paradigm in its entirety and to search for new fundamental physics.