Post-Newtonian effects of planetary gravity on the perihelion shift

We consider a coplanar system comprised of a massive central body (a star), a less massive secondary (a planet) on a circular orbit, and a test particle on a bound orbit exterior to that of the secondary. The gravitational pull exerted on the test particle by the secondary acts as a small perturbation, wherefore the trajectory of the particle can be described as an ellipse of a precessing perihelion. While the apsidal motion is defined overwhelmingly by the Newtonian portion of the secondary's gravity, the post-Newtonian portion, too, brings its tiny input. We explore whether this input may be of any astrophysical relevance in the next few decades. We demonstrate that the overall post-Newtonian input of the secondary's gravity can be split into two parts. One can be expressed via the orbital angular momentum of the secondary, another via its orbital radius. Despite some moderately large numerical factors showing up in the expressions for these two parts, the resulting post-Newtonian contributions from the secondary's gravity into the apsidal motion of the test particle turn out to be small enough to be neglected in the near-future measurements.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, 1 table; accepted by MNRA

On the recently determined anomalous perihelion precession of Saturn

The astronomer E.V. Pitjeva, by analyzing with the EPM2008 ephemerides a large number of planetary observations including also two years (2004-2006) of normal points from the Cassini spacecraft, phenomenologically estimated a statistically significant non-zero correction to the usual Newtonian/Einsteinian secular precession of the longitude of the perihelion of Saturn, i.e. \Delta\dot\varpi_Sat = -0.006 +/- 0.002 arcsec/cy; the formal, statistical error is 0.0007 arcsec/cy. It can be explained neither by any of the standard classical and general relativistic dynamical effects mismodelled/unmodelled in the force models of the EPM2008 ephemerides nor by several exotic modifications of gravity recently put forth to accommodate certain cosmological/astrophysical observations without resorting to dark energy/dark matter. Both independent analyses by other teams of astronomers and further processing of larger data sets from Cassini will be helpful in clarifying the nature and the true existence of the anomalous precession of the perihelion of Saturn.Comment: LaTex2e, 14 pages, no figures, 2 tables. Accepted by The Astronomical Journal (AJ

Solar System planetary orbital motions and dark matter

In this paper we explicitly work out the effects that a spherically symmetric distribution of dark matter with constant density would induce on the Keplerian orbital elements of the Solar System planets and compare them with the latest results in planetary orbit determination from the EPM2004 ephemerides. It turns out that the longitudes of perihelia and the mean longitudes are affected by secular precessions. The resulting upper bounds on dark matter density, obtained from the EPM2004 formal errors in the determined mean longitude shifts over 90 years, lie in the range 10^-19-10^-20 g cm^-3 with a peak of 10^-22 g cm^-3 for Mars. Suitable combinations of the planetary mean longitudes and perihelia, which cancel out the aliasing impact of some of the unmodelled or mismodelled forces of the dynamical models of EPM2004, yield a global upper bound of 7 10^-20 g cm^-3 and 4 10^-19 g cm^-3, respectively.Comment: Latex, 8 pages, 2 tables, no figures, 8 references. Revised version with improved analysi

Is it possible to measure the Lense-Thirring effect on the orbits of the planets in the gravitational field of the Sun?

Here we explore a novel approach in order to try to measure the post-Newtonian 1/c^2 Lense-Thirring secular effect induced by the gravitomagnetic field of the Sun on the planetary orbital motion. Due to the relative smallness of the solar angular momentum J and the large values of the planetary semimajor axes a, the gravitomagnetic precessions, which affect the nodes Omega and the perihelia omega and are proportional to J/a^3, are of the order of 10^-3 arcseconds per century only for, e.g., Mercury. This value lies just at the edge of the present-day observational sensitivity in reconstructing the planetary orbits, although future missions to Mercury like Messenger and BepiColombo could allow to increase it. The major problems come from the main sources of systematic errors. They are the aliasing classical precessions induced by the multipolar expansion of the Sun's gravitational potential and the classical secular N-body precessions which are of the same order of magnitude or much larger than the Lense-Thirring precessions of interest. This definitely rules out the possibility of analyzing only one orbital element of, e.g., Mercury. In order to circumvent these problems, we propose a suitable linear combination of the orbital residuals of the nodes of Mercury, Venus and Mars which is, by construction, independent of such classical secular precessions. A 1-sigma reasonable estimate of the obtainable accuracy yields a 36% error. Since the major role in the proposed combination is played by the Mercury's node, it could happen that the new, more accurate ephemerides available in future thanks to the Messenger and BepiColombo missions will offer an opportunity to improve the present unfavorable situation.Comment: LaTex2e, A&A macros, 6 pages, no figure, 3 tables. Substantial revision. More realistic conclusions. Estimations of the impact of BepiColombo presente

Gravitomagnetism and the Earth-Mercury range

We numerically work out the impact of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect on the Earth-Mercury range caused by the gravitomagnetic field of the rotating Sun. The peak-to peak nominal amplitude of the resulting time-varying signal amounts to 1.75 10^1 m over a temporal interval 2 yr. Future interplanetary laser ranging facilities should reach a cm-level in ranging to Mercury over comparable timescales; for example, the BepiColombo mission, to be launched in 2014, should reach a 4.5 - 10 cm level over 1 - 8 yr. We looked also at other Newtonian (solar quadrupole mass moment, ring of the minor asteroids, Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, Trans-Neptunian Objects) and post-Newtonian (gravitoelectric Schwarzschild solar field) dynamical effects on the Earth-Mercury range. They act as sources of systematic errors for the Lense-Thirring signal which, in turn, if not properly modeled, may bias the recovery of some key parameters of such other dynamical features of motion. Their nominal peak-to-peak amplitudes are as large as 4 10^5 m (Schwarzschild), 3 10^2 m (Sun's quadrupole), 8 10^1 m (Ceres, Pallas, Vesta), 4 m (ring of minor asteroids), 8 10^-1 m (Trans-Neptunian Objects). Their temporal patterns are different with respect to that of the gravitomagnetic signal.Comment: LaTex2e, 19 pages, 2 tables, 6 figures. Small typo in pag. 1406 of the published version fixe

Dark Energy, Induced Gravity and Broken Scale Invariance

We study the cosmological evolution of an induced gravity model with a self-interacting scalar field $\sigma$ and in the presence of matter and radiation. Such model leads to Einstein Gravity plus a cosmological constant as a stable attractor among homogeneous cosmologies and is therefore a viable dark-energy (DE) model for a wide range of scalar field initial conditions and values for its positive $\gamma$ coupling to the Ricci curvature $\gamma \sigma^{2}R$.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, 1 table: final version accepted for publication in PL