Light propagation in the field of the N -body system and its application in the TianQin mission

General relativity (GR) is a highly successful theory that describes gravity as a geometric phenomenon. The gravitational redshift, a classic test of GR, can potentially be violated in alternative gravity theories, and experimental tests on this effect are crucial for our understanding of gravity. In this paper, considering the space-ground clock comparisons with free-space links, we discuss a high-precision Doppler cancellation-based measurement model for testing gravitational redshift. This model can effectively reduce various sources of error and noise, reducing the influences of the first-order Doppler effect, atmospheric delay, Shapiro delay, etc. China's Lunar Exploration Project (CLEP) is proposed to equip the deep-space H maser with a daily stability of $2\times10^{-15}$, which provides an approach for testing gravitational redshift. Based on the simulation, we analyze the space-ground clock comparison experiments of the CLEP experiment, and simulation analysis demonstrates that under ideal condition of high-precision measurement of the onboard H-maser frequency offset and drift, the CLEP experiment may reach the uncertainty of $3.7\times10^{-6}$ after a measurement session of 60 days. Our results demonstrate that if the issue of frequency offset and drift is solved, CLEP missions have a potential of testing the gravitational redshift with high accuracy.

Section: Gravitational Frequency Shiftmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preliminary sensitivity study for a gravitational redshift measurement with China’s Lunar exploration project

Qin,

Liu,

Dai

et al. 2024

“…Once the spacetime metric is given, the standard method for studying the light propagation in a gravitational field is to solve the null geodesic equation or the eikonal equation [91][92][93]. For the light propagation in the Solar-System case, many solutions have been proposed in the post-Newtonian and post-Minkowskian approximations [94][95][96][97][98]. Moreover, a different method is available, which is based on the time transfer function [99][100][101][102][103].…”

Section: Time Delay Of Light and Lorentz Violationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Lorentz symmetry with space-based gravitational-wave detectors

Qin,

Ke,

et al. 2023

Self Cite

Lorentz symmetry (LS), one of the most fundamental physical symmetries, has been extensively studied in the context of quantum gravity and unification theories. Many of these theories predict a LS violation, which could arise from the discreteness of spacetime, or extra dimensions. Standard-model extension (SME) is an effective field theory to describe Lorentz violation whose effects can be explored using precision instruments such as atomic clocks and gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. Considering the pure-gravity sector and matter-gravity coupling sector in the SME, we studied the leading Lorentz-violating modifications to the time delay of light and the relativistic frequency shift of the clock in the space-based GW detectors. We found that the six data streams from the GW mission can construct various combinations of measurement signals, such as single-arm round-trip path, interference path, triangular round-trip path, etc. These measurements are sensitive to the different combinations of SME coefficients and provide novel linear combinations of SME coefficients different from previous studies. Based on the orbits of TianQin, LISA, and Taiji missions, we calculated the response of Lorentz-violating effects on the combinations of the measurement signal data streams. Our results allow us to estimate the sensitivities for SME coefficients: $10^{-6}$ for the gravity sector coefficient $\bar{s}^{TT}$, $10^{-6}$ for matter-gravity coupling coefficients $(\bar{a}^{(e+p)}_{\text{eff}})_{T}$ and $\bar{c}^{(e+p)}_{TT}$, and $10^{-5}$ for $(\bar{a}^{n}_{\text{eff}})_{T}$ and $\bar{c}^{n}_{TT}$.

“…The geocentric orbits have certain advantages in engineering such as satellite deployment and easy communication with the ground. But for spaceborne telescopes, the stability (optical path stability and stray light stability) and wavefront quality must be further improved compared with the orbit around the Sun due to the thermal stability [14]. The accuracy of the GW measurement is affected directly by these disturbances, as it will introduce the phase noise to the interferometric beat signal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High performance telescope system design for the TianQin project

Fan¹,

ZHAO²,

PENG³

et al. 2022

China is planning to construct a new space-borne gravitational-wave (GW) observatory, the TianQin project, in which the spaceborne telescope is an important component in laser interferometry. The telescope is aimed to transmit laser beams between the spacecrafts for the measurement of the displacements between proof-masses in long arms. The telescope should have ultra-small wavefront deviation to minimize noise caused by pointing error, ultra-stable structure to minimize optical path noise caused by temperature jitter, ultra-high stray light suppression ability to eliminate background noise. In this paper, we realize a telescope system design with ultra-stable structure as well as ultra-low wavefront distortion for the space-based GW detection mission. The design requirements demand extreme control of high image quality and extraordinary stray light suppression ability. Based on the primary aberration theory, the initial structure design of the mentioned four-mirror optical system is explored. After optimization, the maximum RMS wavefront error is less than λ/300 over the full field of view (FOV), which meets the noise budget on the telescope design. The stray light noise caused by the back reflection of the telescope is also analyzed. The noise at the position of optical bench is less than 10-10 of the transmitted power, satisfying the requirements of space gravitational-wave detection. We believe that our design can be a good candidate for TianQin project, and can also be a good guide for the space telescope design in any other similar science project.