Lense-Thirring precession and modified gravity constraints

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the Lense-Thirring precession can be used to constrain the cosmological constant in modified gravity theories, finding tighter bounds than previous methods across various scales.

Contribution

It derives constraints on the cosmological constant from Lense-Thirring precession measurements in both weak and strong gravitational fields, improving existing bounds significantly.

Findings

Current satellite measurements are consistent with cosmological observations of $\\Lambda$.

Derived constraints on $\\Lambda$ are several orders of magnitude tighter than previous bounds.

Constraints are applicable across different astrophysical scales, from Solar System to Keplerian systems.

Abstract

The orbital Lense-Thirring precession is considered in the context of constraints for weak-field General Relativity involving the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. It is shown that according to the current accuracy of satellite measurements the obtained error limits for $\Lambda$ is self-consistent with cosmological observations. The corrections of $\Lambda$ term are derived for the strong field Lense-Thirring precession i.e. the frame dragging effect and for the nutation. As a result, in the context of recently proposed $\Lambda$-gravity we obtain constraints for $\Lambda$ in both relativistic and weak-field limits. Namely, for the latter we analyze several Keplerian systems at different scales. We find that the obtained constraints for the modified gravity corrections are several orders of magnitude tighter than those available for such effects as gravitational redshift, gravitational time delay and geodetic precession in Solar System.