Cheng-Gang Shao, Ya-Fen Chen, Yu-Jie Tan, Jun Luo, and Shan-Qing Yang

Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurement of Ministry of Education,

School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology,

Wuhan 430074, People’s Republic of China

Michael Edmund Tobar

School of Physics, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia 6009, Australia

(Received 18 August 2016; published 28 November 2016)

Recently, first limits on putative Lorentz invariance violation coefficients in the pure gravity sector were determined by the reanalysis of short-range gravity experiments. Such experiments search for new physics at sidereal frequencies. They are not, however, designed to optimize the signal strength of a Lorentz invariance violation force; in fact the Lorentz violating signal is suppressed in the planar test mass geometry employed in those experiments. We describe a short-range torsion pendulum experiment with enhanced sensitivity to possible Lorentz violating signals. A periodic, striped test mass geometry is used to augment the signal. Careful arrangement of the phases of the striped patterns on opposite ends of the pendulum further enhances the signal while simultaneously suppressing the Newtonian background.

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.94.104061