Abstract
The impact of possible a-priori “imprinting” effects of general relativity itself on recent attempts to measure the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect with the LAGEOS satellites orbiting the Earth and the terrestrial geopotential models from the dedicated mission GRACE is investigated. It is analytically shown that general relativity, not explicitly solved for in the GRACE-based models, may “imprint” their even zonal harmonic coeffi-cients of low degrees at a non-negligible level, given the present-day accuracy in recovering them. This trans-lates into a bias of the LAGEOS-based relativistic tests as large as the Lense-Thirring effect itself. Further analyses should include general relativity itself in the GRACE data processing by explicitly solving for it.
Highlights
The term “gravitomagnetism” [1,2,3] (GM) denotes those gravitational phenomena concerning orbiting test particles, precessing gyroscopes, moving clocks and atoms and propagating electromagnetic waves [4,5] which, in the framework of the Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (GTR), arise from non-static distributions of matter and energy
It is analytically shown that general relativity, not explicitly solved for in the GRACE-based models, may “imprint” their even zonal harmonic coefficients of low degrees J at a non-negligible level, given the present-day accuracy in recovering them
A further, crucial step consists of evaluating the impact of such an a-priori “imprint” on the test conducted with the LAGEOS satellites and the combination of Equation (5): if the LAGEOS-LAGEOS II uncancelled combined classical geopotential precession computed with the GRACEbased a-priori “imprinted” even zonals of Table 2 is a relevant part of, or if it is even larger than the combined Lense-Thirring precession, it will be demonstrated that the doubts concerning the a-priori gravitomagnetic “memory” effect are founded
Summary
The term “gravitomagnetism” [1,2,3] (GM) denotes those gravitational phenomena concerning orbiting test particles, precessing gyroscopes, moving clocks and atoms and propagating electromagnetic waves [4,5] which, in the framework of the Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (GTR), arise from non-static distributions of matter and energy. In the weak-field and slow motion approximation, the Einstein field equations of GTR, which is a highly non-linear Lorentz-covariant tensor theory of gravitation, get linearized [6], looking like the Maxwellian equattioomnsagonfetiecl”ecftireolmd agB ngti,smin.duAcesdabycotnhseeqouffe-ndciaeg, oana“lgcroamvi--. Where G is the Newtonian gravitational constant and c is the speed of light in vacuum. It affects, e.g., a test particle moving with velocity v with a non-central acceleration [7]
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