Signature of biased range in the non-dynamical Chern-Simons modified gravity and its measurements with satellite-satellite tracking missions: Theoretical studies

Abstract

Having great accuracy in the range and range rate measurements,he GRACE mission and the planed GRACE Follow On mission can in principle be employed to place strong constraints on certain relativistic gravitational theories. In this paper, we work out the range observable of the non-dynamical Chern-Simons modified gravity for the Satellite-to-Satellite Tracking (SST) measurements. We find out that a characteristic time accumulating range signal appears in non-dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, which has no analogue found in the standard parity-preserving metric theories of gravity. The magnitude of this Chern-Simons range signal will reach a few times of $\chi cm$ for each free flight of these SST missions, here $\chi$ is the dimensionless post-Newtonian parameter of the non-dynamical Chern-Simons theory. Therefore, with the 12 years data of the GRACE mission, one expects that the mass scale $M_{CS}=\frac{4\hbar c}{\chi a}$ of the non-dynamical Chern-Simons gravity could be constrained to be larger than $1.9\times10^{-9}eV$. For the GRACE FO mission that scheduled to be launched in 2017, the much stronger bound that $M_{CS}\geq5\times10^{-7}eV$ is expected.