Secular Gravity Gradients in Non-Dynamical Chern-Simons Modified Gravity for Satellite Gradiometry Measurements

Abstract

With continuous advances in related technologies, relativistic gravitational experiments with orbiting gradiometers becomes feasible, which could naturally be incorporated into future satellite gravity missions. Tests of Chern-Simons modified gravity are meaningful since such a modification gives us insights into (possible) parity-violations in gravitation. In this work, we derive, at the post-Newtonian level, the new observables of secular gradients from the non-dynamical Chern-Simons modified gravity, which will greatly improve the constraint on the mass scale $M_{CS}$ that may be drawn from satellite gradiometry measurements. For superconducting gradiometers, a strong bound $M_{CS}\geq 10^{-7}\ eV$ could in principle be obtained. For future optical gradiometers based on similar technologies from the LISA PathFinder mission, a even stronger bound $M_{CS}\geq 10^{-6}\sim 10^{-5}\ eV$ might be expected.