A 1% Measurement of the Gravitomagnetic Field of the Earth with Laser-Tracked Satellites
Journal
Date Issued
2020
Author(s)
•
•
•
Bassan, M
•
Pucacco, G
•
Pardini, C
•
Anselmo, L
•
Abstract
A new measurement of the gravitomagnetic field of the Earth is presented. The measurement has been obtained through the careful evaluation of the Lense-Thirring (LT) precession on the combined orbits of three passive geodetic satellites, LAGEOS, LAGEOS II, and LARES, tracked by the Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) technique. This general relativity precession, also known as frame-dragging, is a manifestation of spacetime curvature generated by mass-currents, a peculiarity of Einstein’s theory of gravitation. The measurement stands out, compared to previous measurements in the same context, for its precision (≃7.4×10−3, at a 95% confidence level) and accuracy (≃16×10−3), i.e., for a reliable and robust evaluation of the systematic sources of error due to both gravitational and non-gravitational perturbations. To achieve this measurement, we have largely exploited the results of the GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) mission in order to significantly improve the description of the Earth’s gravitational field, also modeling its dependence on time. In this way, we strongly reduced the systematic errors due to the uncertainty in the knowledge of the Earth even zonal harmonics and, at the same time, avoided a possible bias of the final result and, consequently, of the precision of the measurement, linked to a non-reliable handling of the unmodeled and mismodeled periodic effects.
Volume
6
Issue
9
Start page
139
Issn Identifier
2218-1997
Ads BibCode
2020Univ....6..139L
Rights
open.access
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
universe-06-00139.pdf
Description
Pdf editoriale
Size
735.71 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
6f79e0e33b606e9f3860df16f3347aaf