Related papers: Gravitational wave effects on astrometric observab…
Electromagnetic methods recently proposed for detecting gravitational waves modify the Michelson phase shift analysis (historically employed for special relativity). We suggest that a frequency modulation analysis is more suited to general…
Astrometric space missions like Gaia have stimulated a rapid advance in the field of relativistic astrometry. Present investigations in that field aim at accuracies significantly less than a microarcsecond. We review the present status of…
In this work, analyzing the propagation of electromagnetic waves in the field of gravitational waves, we show the presence and significance of the so called surfing effect for pulsar timing measurements. It is shown that, due to the…
Gravitational waves can probe fundamental physics, leading to new constraints on the mass of the graviton. Previous tests, however, have neglected the effect of screening, which is typically present in modified theories that predict a…
Gravitational waves can act like gravitational lenses, affecting the observed positions, brightnesses, and redshifts of distant objects. Exact expressions for such effects are derived here in general relativity, allowing for…
Gravitational waves (GWs) are direct probes of cosmological gravity, sensitive to space-time inhomogeneities along their propagation. The presence of massive objects breaks homogeneity and isotropy, allowing for new interactions between…
Gaia is a satellite mission of the European Space Agency which is creating a catalogue of extremely accurate positions, distances and space motions of two billion stars in our Galaxy, along with more than one hundred thousand solar system…
The first direct observation of gravitational waves' action upon matter has recently been reported by the BICEP2 experiment. Advanced ground-based gravitational-wave detectors are being installed. They will soon be commissioned, and then…
We introduce a unified formalism to describe both timing and astrometric perturbations induced on astrophysical point sources by gravitational waves using a complex spin field on the sphere. This allows the use of spin-weighted spherical…
The Gaia space project, planned for launch in 2011, is one of the ESA cornerstone missions, and will provide astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data of very high quality for about one billion stars brighter than V=20. This will…
Gravitational-wave detectors with sensitivities sufficient to measure the radiation from astrophysical sources are rapidly coming into existence. By the end of this decade, there will exist several ground-based instruments in North America,…
A tool for representation of the one-dimensional astrometric signal of Gaia is described and investigated in terms of fit discrepancy and astrometric performance with respect to number of parameters required. The proposed basis function is…
We derive the effects of a non-zero cosmological constant $\Lambda$ on gravitational wave propagation in the linearized approximation of general relativity. In this approximation we consider the situation where the metric can be written as…
We give an assessment of the significance of various known effects which may produce genuine fluctuations of star positions comparable to or larger than Gaia's measurement noise, and which thus may limit the ultimately reachable precision…
We study the impact of relativistic gravitational deflection of light on the accuracy of future Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). We estimate the deflection angles caused by the monopole, quadrupole and octupole components of…
Gravitational wave detectors are already operating at interesting sensitivity levels, and they have an upgrade path that should result in secure detections by 2014. We review the physics of gravitational waves, how they interact with…
Launch of the Gaia space observatory started a new era in astrometry when the accuracy of star coordinates increased by thousands of times. Significant improvement of accuracy was also expected for the coordinates of the Solar system…
High-precision astrometry offers a promising approach to detect low-frequency gravitational waves, complementing pulsar timing array (PTA) observations. We explore the response of astrometric measurements to a stochastic gravitational wave…
Although gravitational waves only interact weakly with matter, their propagation is affected by a gravitational potential. If a gravitational wave source is eclipsed by a star, measuring these perturbations provides a way to directly…
The measurement of the positions, distances, motions and luminosities of stars represents the foundations of modern astronomical knowledge. Launched at the end of the eighties, the ESA Hipparcos satellite was the first space mission…