Radioscience simulations in General Relativity and in alternative theories of gravity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new software for simulating radioscience signals in General Relativity and alternative theories, enabling tests of gravity theories using Solar System measurements.

Contribution

The paper presents a flexible simulation software that models radioscience signals in both General Relativity and alternative gravity theories, facilitating comparative analysis.

Findings

Simulations for Cassini in Post-Einsteinian Gravity provide constraints on parameters.

The Cassini data arc is insufficient to constrain the MOND External Field Effect.

The software can generate signatures of hypothetical alternative gravity theories.

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on the possibility to test General Relativity in the Solar System with radioscience measurements. To this aim, we present a new software that simulates Range and Doppler signals directly from the space-time metric. This flexible approach allows one to perform simulations in General Relativity and in alternative metric theories of gravity. In a second step, a least-squares fit of the different initial conditions involved in the situation is performed in order to compare anomalous signals produced by a given alternative theory with the ones obtained in General Relativity. This software provides orders of magnitude and signatures stemming from hypothetical alternative theories of gravity on radioscience signals. As an application, we present some simulations done for the Cassini mission in Post-Einsteinian Gravity and in the context of MOND External Field Effect. We deduce constraints on the Post-Einsteinian parameters but find that the considered arc of the Cassini mission is not useful to constrain the MOND External Field Effect.