English

Effect of Earth-Moon's gravity on TianQin's range acceleration noise

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2021-03-17 v2 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

TianQin is a proposed space gravitational-wave detection mission using circular high Earth orbits. The geocentric concept has raised questions about the disturbing effect of the nearby gravity field of the Earth-Moon system on the highly-sensitive intersatellite ranging measurements. Here we examine the issue through high precision numerical orbit simulation with detailed gravity-field models. By evaluating range accelerations between distant free-falling test masses, the study shows that the majority of the Earth-Moon's gravity disturbances are not in TianQin's detection frequency band above 10410^{-4} Hz, and hence present no showstoppers to the mission.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.03264,
  title  = {Effect of Earth-Moon's gravity on TianQin's range acceleration noise},
  author = {Xuefeng Zhang and Chengjian Luo and Lei Jiao and Bobing Ye and Huimin Yuan and Lin Cai and Defeng Gu and Jianwei Mei and Jun Luo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.03264},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

7 pages, 4 figures, to match the accepted version by Phys. Rev. D