On the influence of gravitational radiation on a gyroscope

TL;DR

This paper investigates how gravitational radiation affects a gyroscope's precession in Bondi spacetime, revealing that the precession rate is directly linked to the system's news function and vanishes without news.

Contribution

It provides a detailed calculation of gyroscope precession influenced by gravitational waves, connecting the effect to the news function and exploring implications for non-radiative spacetimes.

Findings

Precession rate is proportional to the news function.

Precession vanishes when there is no gravitational news.

Non-radiative, time-dependent spacetimes cause measurable precession.

Abstract

We calculate the precession of a gyroscope at rest in a Bondi spacetime. It is shown that, far from the source, the leading term in the rate of precession of the gyroscope is simply expressed through the news function of the system, and vanishes if and only if there is no news. Rough estimates are presented, illustrating the order of magnitude of the expected effect for different scenarios. It is also shown from the next order term that non-radiative (but time dependent) spacetimes will produce a gyroscope precession of that order, providing thereby ``observational'' evidence for the violation of the Huygens's principle.