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Gravitomagnetism and Its Measurement with Laser Ranging to the LAGEOS Satellites and GRACE Earth Gravity Models

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General Relativity and John Archibald Wheeler

Part of the book series: Astrophysics and Space Science Library ((ASSL,volume 367))

Abstract

Dragging of Inertial Frames and gravitomagnetism are predictions of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. Here, after a brief introduction to these phenomena of Einstein’s gravitational theory, we describe the method we have used to measure the Earth’s gravitomagnetic field using the satellites LAGEOS (LAser GEOdynamics Satellite), LAGEOS 2 and the Earth’s gravity models obtained by the spacecraft GRACE. We then report the results of our analysis with LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2, and with a number of GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) models, that have confirmed this prediction of Einstein General Relativity and measured the Earth’s gravitomagnetic field with an accuracy of approximately 10%. We finally discuss the error sources in our measurement of gravitomagnetism and, in particular, the error induced by the uncertainties in the GRACE Earth gravity models. Here we both analyze the errors due to the static and time-varying Earth gravity field, and in particular we discuss the accuracy of the GRACE-only gravity models used in our measurement. We also provide a detailed analysis of the errors due to atmospheric refraction mis-modelling and to the uncertainties in measuring the orbital inclination. In the appendix, we report the complete error analysis and the total error budget in the measurement of gravitomagnetism with the LAGEOS satellites.

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Acknowledgement

We gratefully acknowledge the support of ASI, the Italian Space Agency, grants I/043/08/0 and I/016/07/0.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dip. Ingegneria dell’Innovazione, Università del Salento and INFN Sezione di Lecce, via Monteroni, 73100, Lecce, Italy

    Ignazio Ciufolini

  2. Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, Maryland, 21250, USA

    Erricos C. Pavlis

  3. Center for Space Research, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, 78759, USA

    John Ries, Rolf Koenig & Hans Newmayer

  4. GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany

    Giampiero Sindoni & Antonio Paolozzi

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  1. Ignazio Ciufolini
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  2. Erricos C. Pavlis
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  3. John Ries
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  4. Rolf Koenig
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  5. Giampiero Sindoni
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  7. Hans Newmayer
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Correspondence to Ignazio Ciufolini .

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  1. Dipto. Ingegneria dell’Innovazione, Università del Salento, Via per Monteroni, Lecce, 73100, Italy

    Ignazio Ciufolini

  2. Dept. Physics, Center for Relativity, University of Texas, Austin, Austin, 78712-1081, USA

    Richard A. Matzner

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Dedicated to John Archibald Wheeler, one of the masters of physics of the XX century and father of the renaissance of General Relativity.

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Ciufolini, I. et al. (2010). Gravitomagnetism and Its Measurement with Laser Ranging to the LAGEOS Satellites and GRACE Earth Gravity Models. In: Ciufolini, I., Matzner, R. (eds) General Relativity and John Archibald Wheeler. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 367. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3735-0_17

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