English

Lunar response to gravitational waves

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2024-08-26 v2 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Abstract

It has been suggested to use seismic detectors on the Moon as a tool to search for gravitational waves in an intermediate frequency range between mHz and Hz. Employing three different spherically symmetric models for the lunar interior, we investigate the response of the Moon to gravitational waves in Einstein and Jordan-Brans-Dicke gravity. We find that the first eigenfrequencies of the different models depend only weakly on the model details, with the fundamental frequency ν1\nu_1 close to 1\,ms both for spheroidal and toroidal oscillations. In contrast, the resulting displacement varies up to a factor two, being in the range (2.75.6)×1011/h0(2.7-5.6)\times 10^{11}/h_0 cm for spheroidal oscillations with amplitude h0h_0. Toroidal oscillations are suppressed by a factor 2πνR/c2\pi\nu R/c, both in Einstein gravity and in general scalar-tensor theories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2312.11665,
  title  = {Lunar response to gravitational waves},
  author = {M. Kachelriess and M. P. Nødtvedt},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.11665},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

18 pages, 17 pdf figures; v2: extended discussion of scalar mode, corrected normalisation of Green function; conclusion unchanged; accepted in PRD

R2 v1 2026-06-28T13:55:19.274Z