Effect of Earth-Moon's gravity on TianQin's range acceleration noise
Xuefeng Zhang, Chengjian Luo, Lei Jiao, Bobing Ye, Huimin Yuan, Lin, Cai, Defeng Gu, Jianwei Mei, Jun Luo
TL;DR
This study assesses how the Earth-Moon gravity influences TianQin's sensitive measurements, finding that most disturbances occur outside the detection frequency band and do not threaten the mission's success.
Contribution
The paper provides a detailed numerical analysis demonstrating that Earth-Moon gravity disturbances are negligible within TianQin's detection band, supporting the mission's feasibility.
Findings
Most Earth-Moon gravity disturbances are below 10^{-4} Hz.
Gravity effects are not significant within TianQin's detection frequency band.
The study confirms no major gravity-induced noise issues for TianQin.
Abstract
TianQin is a proposed space gravitational-wave detection mission using circular high Earth orbits. The geocentric concept has raised questions about the disturbing effect of the nearby gravity field of the Earth-Moon system on the highly-sensitive intersatellite ranging measurements. Here we examine the issue through high precision numerical orbit simulation with detailed gravity-field models. By evaluating range accelerations between distant free-falling test masses, the study shows that the majority of the Earth-Moon's gravity disturbances are not in TianQin's detection frequency band above Hz, and hence present no showstoppers to the mission.
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