A critical approach to the concept of a polar, low-altitude LARES satellite

According to very recent developments of the LARES mission, which would be devoted to the measurement of the general relativistic Lense--Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth with Satellite Laser Ranging, it seems that the LARES satellite might be finally launched in a polar, low--altitude orbit by means of a relatively low--cost rocket. The observable would be the node only. In this letter we critically analyze this scenario.Comment: LaTex2e, 11 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Conservative evaluation of the uncertainty in the LAGEOS-LAGEOS II Lense-Thirring test

We deal with the test of the general relativistic gravitomagnetic Lense-Thirring effect currently ongoing in the Earth's gravitational field with the combined nodes \Omega of the laser-ranged geodetic satellites LAGEOS and LAGEOS II. One of the most important source of systematic uncertainty on the orbits of the LAGEOS satellites, with respect to the Lense-Thirring signature, is the bias due to the even zonal harmonic coefficients J_L of the multipolar expansion of the Earth's geopotential which account for the departures from sphericity of the terrestrial gravitational potential induced by the centrifugal effects of its diurnal rotation. The issue addressed here is: are the so far published evaluations of such a systematic error reliable and realistic? The answer is negative. Indeed, if the difference \Delta J_L among the even zonals estimated in different global solutions (EIGEN-GRACE02S, EIGEN-CG03C, GGM02S, GGM03S, ITG-Grace02, ITG-Grace03s, JEM01-RL03B, EGM2008, AIUB-GRACE01S) is assumed for the uncertainties \delta J_L instead of using their more or less calibrated covariance sigmas \sigma_{J_L}, it turns out that the systematic error \delta\mu in the Lense-Thirring measurement is about 3 to 4 times larger than in the evaluations so far published based on the use of the sigmas of one model at a time separately, amounting up to 37% for the pair EIGEN-GRACE02S/ITG-Grace03s. The comparison among the other recent GRACE-based models yields bias as large as about 25-30%. The major discrepancies still occur for J_4, J_6 and J_8, which are just the zonals the combined LAGEOS/LAGOES II nodes are most sensitive to.Comment: LaTex, 12 pages, 12 tables, no figures, 64 references. To appear in Central European Journal of Physics (CEJP

LAGEOS-type Satellites in Critical Supplementary Orbit Configuration and the Lense-Thirring Effect Detection

In this paper we analyze quantitatively the concept of LAGEOS--type satellites in critical supplementary orbit configuration (CSOC) which has proven capable of yielding various observables for many tests of General Relativity in the terrestrial gravitational field, with particular emphasis on the measurement of the Lense--Thirring effect.Comment: LaTex2e, 20 pages, 7 Tables, 6 Figures. Changes in Introduction, Conclusions, reference added, accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Infinite reduction of couplings in non-renormalizable quantum field theory

I study the problem of renormalizing a non-renormalizable theory with a reduced, eventually finite, set of independent couplings. The idea is to look for special relations that express the coefficients of the irrelevant terms as unique functions of a reduced set of independent couplings lambda, such that the divergences are removed by means of field redefinitions plus renormalization constants for the lambda's. I consider non-renormalizable theories whose renormalizable subsector R is interacting and does not contain relevant parameters. The "infinite" reduction is determined by i) perturbative meromorphy around the free-field limit of R, or ii) analyticity around the interacting fixed point of R. In general, prescriptions i) and ii) mutually exclude each other. When the reduction is formulated using i), the number of independent couplings remains finite or slowly grows together with the order of the expansion. The growth is slow in the sense that a reasonably small set of parameters is sufficient to make predictions up to very high orders. Instead, in case ii) the number of couplings generically remains finite. The infinite reduction is a tool to classify the irrelevant interactions and address the problem of their physical selection.Comment: 40 pages; v2: more explanatory comments; appeared in JHE

On a new observable for measuring the Lense-Thirring effect with Satellite Laser Ranging

In this paper we present a rather extensive error budget for the difference of the perigees of a pair of supplementary SLR satellites aimed to the detection of the Lense-Thirring effect.Comment: LaTex2e, 14 pages, 1 table, no figures. Some changes and additions to the abstract, Introduction and Conclusions. References updated, typos corrected. Equation corrected. To appear in General Relativity and Gravitatio

The impact of the new CHAMP and GRACE Earth gravity models on the measurement of the general relativistic Lense--Thirring effect with the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites

Among the effects predicted by the General Theory of Relativity for the orbital motion of a test particle, the post-Newtonian gravitomagnetic Lense-Thirring effect is very interesting and, up to now, there is not yet an undisputable experimental direct test of it. To date, the data analysis of the orbits of the existing geodetic LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites has yielded a test of the Lense-Thirring effect with a claimed accuracy of 20%-30%. According to some scientists such estimates could be optimistic. Here we wish to discuss the improvements obtainable in this measurement, in terms of reliability of the evaluation of the systematic error and reduction of its magnitude, due to the new CHAMP and GRACE Earth gravity models.Comment: LaTex2e, 6 pages, no figures, no tables. Paper presented at 2nd CHAMP science meeting, Potsdam, 1-4 September 200

Perspectives in measuring the PPN parameters beta and gamma in the Earth's gravitational fields with the CHAMP/GRACE models

The current bounds on the PPN parameters gamma and beta are of the order of 10^-4-10^-5. Various missions aimed at improving such limits by several orders of magnitude have more or less recently been proposed like LATOR, ASTROD, BepiColombo and GAIA. They involve the use of various spacecraft, to be launched along interplanetary trajectories, for measuring the effects of the solar gravity on the propagation of electromagnetic waves. In this paper we investigate what is needed to measure the combination nu=(2+2gamma-beta)/3 of the post-Newtonian gravitoelectric Einstein perigee precession of a test particle to an accuracy of about 10^-5 with a pair of drag-free spacecraft in the Earth's gravitational field. It turns out that the latest gravity models from the dedicated CHAMP and GRACE missions would allow to reduce the systematic error of gravitational origin just to this demanding level of accuracy. In regard to the non-gravitational errors, the spectral noise density of the drag-free sensors required to reach such level of accuracy would amounts to 10^-8-10^-9 cm s^-2 Hz^-1/2 over very low frequencies. Although not yet obtainable with the present technologies, such level of compensation is much less demanding than those required for, e.g., LISA. As a by-product, an independent measurement of the post-Newtonian gravitomagnetic Lense-Thirring effect with a 0.9% accuracy would be possible as well. The forthcoming Earth gravity models from CHAMP and GRACE will further reduce the systematic gravitational errors in both of such tests.Comment: LaTex2e, 14 pages, 3 tables, no figures, 75 references. To appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Many-core applications to online track reconstruction in HEP experiments

Interest in parallel architectures applied to real time selections is growing in High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments. In this paper we describe performance measurements of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) and Intel Many Integrated Core architecture (MIC) when applied to a typical HEP online task: the selection of events based on the trajectories of charged particles. We use as benchmark a scaled-up version of the algorithm used at CDF experiment at Tevatron for online track reconstruction - the SVT algorithm - as a realistic test-case for low-latency trigger systems using new computing architectures for LHC experiment. We examine the complexity/performance trade-off in porting existing serial algorithms to many-core devices. Measurements of both data processing and data transfer latency are shown, considering different I/O strategies to/from the parallel devices.Comment: Proceedings for the 20th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP); missing acks adde