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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 5: Hauptvorträge Dienstag: Weltraummissionen

GR 5.3: Hauptvortrag

Dienstag, 16. März 2010, 09:50–10:30, JUR K

Towards a One Percent Measurement of Frame Dragging by Spin with Satellite Laser Ranging to LAGEOS, LAGEOS 2 and LARES and GRACE Gravity Models — •Ignazio Ciufolini¹, Antonio Paolozzi², Erricos Pavlis³, John Ries⁴, Rolf Koenig⁵, Richard Matzner⁶, Giampiero Sindoni², and Hans Neumayer⁵ — ¹University of Salento and INFN, Lecce, Italy — ²Sapienza University of Rome, Scuola di Ingegneria Aerospaziale, Rome, Italy — ³University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, USA — ⁴University of Texas at Austin, Center for Space Research, Austin, USA — ⁵GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany — ⁶University of Texas at Austin, Center for Relativity, Austin, USA

During the past century Einstein's theory of General Relativity gave rise to an experimental triumph; however, there are still aspects of this theory to be measured or more accurately tested. Today one of the main challenges in experimental gravitation, together with the direct detection of gravitational waves, is the accurate measurement of the gravitomagnetic field generated by the angular momentum of a body. Here, after a brief introduction on frame-dragging and gravitomagnetism, we describe the measurements of frame-dragging by the Earth spin, with an accuracy of approximately 10%, using the satellites LAGEOS, LAGEOS 2 and the Earth's gravity models obtained by the GRACE project. We then present the LARES experiment to be launched in 2010 by the Italian Space Agency for a measurement of frame-dragging with an accuracy of a few percent.