Tests of fundamental physics with the Gaia mission through the dynamics of minor planets

Mouret, Serge

doi:10.1103/physrevd.84.122001

Cited by 12 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…In addition to gravitation tests performed by measuring the light deflection, Gaia also provides a unique opportunity to test gravitation by considering the orbital dynamics of SSO. One can estimate that about 360 000 asteroids will be regularly observed by Gaia at the sub-mas level, which will allow us to perform various valuable tests of gravitation [205,206]. In particular, realistic simulations of more than 250 000 asteroids have shown that Gaia will be able to constrain the β PPN parameter at the level of 10 −3 [205].…”

Section: Missions Ttst Jsi Jmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tests of Lorentz Symmetry in the Gravitational Sector

et al. 2016

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Lorentz symmetry is one of the pillars of both General Relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics. Motivated by ideas about quantum gravity, unification theories and violations of CPT symmetry, a significant effort has been put the last decades into testing Lorentz symmetry. This review focuses on Lorentz symmetry tests performed in the gravitational sector. We briefly review the basics of the pure gravitational sector of the Standard-Model Extension (SME) framework, a formalism developed in order to systematically parametrize hypothetical violations of the Lorentz invariance. Furthermore, we discuss the latest constraints obtained within this formalism including analyses of the following measurements: atomic gravimetry, Lunar Laser Ranging, Very Long Baseline Interferometry, planetary ephemerides, Gravity Probe B, binary pulsars, high energy cosmic rays, . . . In addition, we propose a combined analysis of all these results. We also discuss possible improvements on current analyses and present some sensitivity analyses for future observations.

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Section: Missions Ttst Jsi Jmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tests of Lorentz Symmetry in the Gravitational Sector

et al. 2016

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“…Gaia's objective is to unravel the kinematical, dynamical, and chemical structure and evolution of our Galaxy, the Milky Way (e.g., Gómez et al 2010). In addition, Gaia's data will revolutionise many other areas of astronomy, e.g., stellar structure and evolution, stellar variability, double and multiple stars, solar-system bodies, extra-galactic objects, fundamental physics, and exoplanets (e.g., Pourbaix 2008;Tanga et al 2012;Mignard & Klioner 2010;Eyer et al 2011;Sozzetti 2011;Mouret 2011;Tsalmantza et al 2009;Krone-Martins et al 2013). During its five-year lifetime, Gaia will survey the full sky and repeatedly observe the brightest 1000 million objects, down to 20th magnitude (e.g., de Bruijne et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting stars, galaxies, and asteroids withGaia

Bruijne

Allen

Azaz

et al. 2015

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Context. Gaia is Europe's space astrometry mission, aiming to make a three-dimensional map of 1000 million stars in our Milky Way to unravel its kinematical, dynamical, and chemical structure and evolution.Aims. We present a study of Gaia's detection capability of objects, in particular non-saturated stars, double stars, unresolved external galaxies, and asteroids. Gaia's on-board detection software autonomously discriminates stars from spurious objects like cosmic rays and solar protons. For this, parametrised criteria of the shape of the point spread function are used, which need to be calibrated and tuned. This study aims to provide an optimum set of parameters for these filters. Methods. We developed a validated emulation of the on-board detection software, which has 20 free, so-called rejection parameters which govern the boundaries between stars on the one hand and sharp (high-frequency) or extended (low-frequency) events on the other hand. We evaluate the detection and rejection performance of the algorithm using catalogues of simulated single stars, resolved and unresolved double stars, cosmic rays, solar protons, unresolved external galaxies, and asteroids. Results. We optimised the rejection parameters, improving -with respect to the functional baseline -the detection performance of single stars and of unresolved and resolved double stars, while, at the same time, improving the rejection performance of cosmic rays and of solar protons. The optimised rejection parameters also remove the artefact of the functional-baseline parameters that the reduction of the detection probability of stars as a function of magnitude already sets in before the nominal faint-end threshold at G = 20 mag. We find, as a result of the rectangular pixel size, that the minimum separation to resolve a close, equal-brightness double star is 0.23 arcsec in the along-scan and 0.70 arcsec in the across-scan direction, independent of the brightness of the primary. To resolve double stars with ∆G > 0 mag, larger separations are required. We find that, whereas the optimised rejection parameters have no significant impact on the detectability of pure de Vaucouleurs profiles, they do significantly improve the detection of pure exponential-disk profiles, and hence also the detection of unresolved external galaxies with intermediate profiles. We also find that the optimised rejection parameters provide detection gains for asteroids fainter than 20 mag and for fast-moving near-Earth objects fainter than 18 mag, although this gain comes at the expense of a modest detection-probability loss for bright, fast-moving near-Earth objects. The major side effect of the optimised parameters is that spurious ghosts in the wings of bright stars essentially pass unfiltered.

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“…Simultaneously with the equations of motion, we integrate the variational equations to obtain the partial derivatives of the observables with respect to all the estimated parameters, i.e. six initial conditions for each SSO and global parameters like the Sun J 2 and the parameters characterizing the gravitational theory (for a detailed presentation of the method, see Hestroffer et al (2010), Mouret (2011) and Hees et al (2015)). Our sensitivity analysis is based on the Fisher information matrix (or covariance matrix) which gives an estimate of the uncertainty for each parameter as well as correlation coefficients.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local tests of gravitation with Gaia observations of Solar System Objects

et al. 2017

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In this proceeding, we show how observations of Solar System Objects with Gaia can be used to test General Relativity and to constrain modified gravitational theories. The high number of Solar System objects observed and the variety of their orbital parameters associated with the impressive astrometric accuracy will allow us to perform local tests of General Relativity. In this communication, we present a preliminary sensitivity study of the Gaia observations on dynamical parameters such as the Sun quadrupolar moment and on various extensions to general relativity such as the parametrized post-Newtonian parameters, the fifth force formalism and a violation of Lorentz symmetry parametrized by the Standard-Model extension framework. We take into account the time sequences and the geometry of the observations that are particular to Gaia for its nominal mission (5 years) and for an extended mission (10 years).

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Tests of fundamental physics with the Gaia mission through the dynamics of minor planets

Cited by 12 publications

References 70 publications

Tests of Lorentz Symmetry in the Gravitational Sector

Tests of Lorentz Symmetry in the Gravitational Sector

Detecting stars, galaxies, and asteroids withGaia

Local tests of gravitation with Gaia observations of Solar System Objects

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