BERGÉ , Joël

The MICROSCOPE mission tested the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) with an unprecedented precision of order 10-15 , two orders of magnitude better than the previous best lab experiments. While the WEP, the cornerstone of General Relativity (GR), does not sway, the decade-long problems faced by fundamental physics stay still: how can we unify GR...

The MICROSCOPE space mission, launched on April 25, 2016, aims to test the weak equivalence principle (WEP) with a 10^−15 precision. Reaching this performance requires an accurate and robust data analysis method, especially since the possible WEP violation signal will be dominated by a strongly colored noise. An important complication is...

The aim of the MICROSCOPE space mission is to test the weak equivalence principle (WEP) with a precision of 10−15, 100 times better than on-ground experiments. The WEP violation signal that we look for in flight has a particular frequency signature and must be extracted from the measurement of accelerations dominated by a colored noise...

The analysis of physical measurements often copes with highly correlated noises and interruptions caused by outliers, saturation events, or transmission losses. We assess the impact of missing data on the performance of linear regression analysis involving the fit of modeled or measured time series. We show that data gaps can significantly...

The existence of a light or massive scalar field with a coupling to matter weaker than gravitational strength is a possible source of violation of the weak equivalence principle. We use the first results on the Eötvös parameter by the MICROSCOPE experiment to set new constraints on such scalar fields. For a massive scalar field of mass smaller...

Launched in April 2016, the satellite of the MICROSCOPE space mission should end its operations in autumn 2018. The science objective is the test of the weak Equivalence Principle (EP) with an accuracy of 10-15. The EP is one cornerstone of General Relativity (GR); it states the equivalence between gravitational and inertial mass. Most of the...

Testing the weak equivalence principle to a precision of 10$^{−15}$ requires a quantity of data that give enough confidence on the final result: ideally, the longer the measurement the better the rejection of the statistical noise. The science sessions had a duration of 120 orbits maximum and were regularly repeated and spaced out to...