Tests of the universality of free fall for strongly self-gravitating bodies with radio pulsars

Understand

In this paper, we review tests of the strong equivalence principle (SEP) derived from pulsar-white dwarf data.

• The extreme difference in binding energy between both components and the precise measurement of the orbital motion provided by pulsar timing allow the only current precision SEP tests for strongly self-gravitating bodies.
• We start by highlighting why such tests are conceptually important.
• We then review previous work where limits on SEP violation are obtained with an ensemble of wide binary systems with small eccentricity orbits.