The impact of tidal errors on the determination of the Lense-Thirring effect from satellite laser ranging

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how different tidal errors influence the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect using satellite laser ranging, highlighting the importance of tidal modeling accuracy for precise relativistic gravity tests.

Contribution

It provides a detailed simulation of tidal perturbations' impact on Lense-Thirring measurements, quantifying their effects over various observational periods.

Findings

Solid tides affect mu recovery below 1%.

Ocean tides and long-period signals can cause up to 2% error after 7 years.

Aliasing of specific tides introduces less than 4% systematic uncertainty.

Abstract

The general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect can be detected by means of a suitable combination of orbital residuals of the laser-ranged LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites. While this observable is not affected by the orbital perturbation induced by the zonal Earth solid and ocean tides, it is sensitive to those generated by the tesseral and sectorial tides. The assessment of their influence on the measurement of the parameter mu, with which the gravitomagnetic effect is accounted for, is the goal of this paper. After simulating the combined residual curve by calculating accurately the mismodeling of the more effective tidal perturbations, it has been found that, while the solid tides affect the recovery of mu at a level always well below 1%, for the ocean tides and the other long-period signals Delta mu depends strongly on the observational period and the noise level: Delta mu(tides) amounts to almost 2% after 7 years. The aliasing effect of K1 l=3 p=1 tide and SRP(4241) solar radiation pressure harmonic, with periods longer than 4 years, on the perigee of LAGEOS II yield to a maximum systematic uncertainty on $\m_{LT}$ of less than 4% over different observational periods. The zonal 18.6-year tide does not affect the combined residuals.