Progress on the Astrometric Gravitation Probe design
Abstract
The Astrometric Gravitation Probe mission is a modern version of the 1919 Dyson-Eddington-Davidson experiment, based on a space-borne telescope with a permanent built-in eclipse, provided by a coronagraphic system. The expected improvement on experimental bounds to General Relativity and competing gravitation theories is by at least two orders of magnitude. The measurement principle is reviewed, in particular the principle of Fizeau-like combination of a set of individual inverted coronagraphs simultaneously feeding a common high resolution telescope. Also, the payload has a dual field of view property, in order to support simultaneous observations of stellar fields either very close, or far away, from the Sun, i.e. fields affected by either high or low light bending. We discuss a set of solutions introduced in the optical design to improve on technical feasibility and robustness of the optical performance against perturbations, in particular induced by manufacturing and alignment tolerances, and launch stresses.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2104.03756,
title = {Progress on the Astrometric Gravitation Probe design},
author = {Mario Gai and Alberto Vecchiato and Alberto Riva and Mario Gilberto Lattanzi and Federico Landini and Beatrice Bucciarelli and Deborah Busonero and Mariateresa Crosta and Shilong Liao and Hao Luo and Giovanni Mana and Marco Pisani and Zhaoxiang Qi and Carlo Paolo Sasso and Zhenghong Tang and Yu Yong},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.03756},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
12 pages, 8 figures; SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave