Gravitomagnetic effects in Kerr-de Sitter space-time

Abstract

We explicitly worked out the orbital effects induced on thetrajectory of a test particle by the the weak-field approximationof the Kerr-de Sitter metric. It results that thenode, the pericentre and the mean anomaly undergo secularprecessions proportional to k. We used such theoretical predictions andthe latest observational determinations of the non-standardprecessions of the perihelia of the inner planets of the SolarSystem to put a bound on k getting k ⩽ 10−29 m−2. The node rate of the LAGEOS Earth's satellite yieldsk ⩽ 10−26 m−2. The periastron precession of the double pulsar PSR J0737-3039A/B allows to obtain k ⩽ 3 × 10−21 m−2.Interpreting k as a cosmological constant Λ, it turns out that such constraints are weaker than those obtained from the Schwarzschild-de Sitter metric.