The universality of free fall and the weak equivalence principle, which are at the basis of general relativity, have been confirmed to 1 part in 10(13). Space experiments with macroscopic test masses of different composition orbiting Earth inside a low altitude satellite aim to improve this precision by 2 orders of magnitude (with the Microscope satellite launched on April 25, 2016) and up to 4 orders of magnitude (with the Galileo Galilei satellite). At such a high precision, many tiny effects must be taken into account in order to be ruled out as the source of a spurious violation signal. In this work, we investigate the general relativistic effects, including those which involve the rotation of both Earth and the test masses, and show that they are by far too small to be considered even in the most challenging experiment.

Do general relativistic effects limit experiments to test the universality of free fall and the weak equivalence principle?

NOBILI, ANNA MARIA
Primo
2016-01-01

Abstract

The universality of free fall and the weak equivalence principle, which are at the basis of general relativity, have been confirmed to 1 part in 10(13). Space experiments with macroscopic test masses of different composition orbiting Earth inside a low altitude satellite aim to improve this precision by 2 orders of magnitude (with the Microscope satellite launched on April 25, 2016) and up to 4 orders of magnitude (with the Galileo Galilei satellite). At such a high precision, many tiny effects must be taken into account in order to be ruled out as the source of a spurious violation signal. In this work, we investigate the general relativistic effects, including those which involve the rotation of both Earth and the test masses, and show that they are by far too small to be considered even in the most challenging experiment.
2016
Nobili, ANNA MARIA
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11568/859944
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