General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, abstract
gr-qc/0607031

From: Lorenzo Iorio [view email]

Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 18:22:08 GMT (4kb)

The impact of the errors in the inclinations on the recent LAGEOS-LAGEOS II Lense-Thirring test

Authors: Lorenzo Iorio

Comments: LaTex2e, 4 pages, 1 table, no figures. New source of systematic error identified. It yields a further 9% bias

Subj-class: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology; Space Physics

The latest test of the general relativistic gravitomagnetic Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth was performed by analyzing a suitable linear combination of the nodes of the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites. In this note we show that the errors in their inclinations i, assumed to be 0.5 milliarcseconds, couple with the classical even zonal node precessions yielding a further contribution of 9% to the total error budget. This bias must be added to all the previously obtained estimates which mainly accounted for the impact of the even zonal harmonics J_L and their secular variations dot J_L only. In the most optimistic case, the total error now amounts to 19%, while, in more conservative scenarios, it gets close to about 30%.

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0607031