Lense-Thirring precession and modified gravity constraints

Abstract

The orbital Lense-Thirring precession is considered in the context of constraints for weak-field General Relativity involving the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. It is shown that according to the current accuracy of satellite measurements the obtained error limits for $\Lambda$ is self-consistent with cosmological observations. The corrections of $\Lambda$ term are derived for the strong field Lense-Thirring precession i.e. the frame dragging effect and for the nutation. As a result, in the context of recently proposed $\Lambda$-gravity we obtain constraints for $\Lambda$ in both relativistic and weak-field limits. Namely, for the latter we analyze several Keplerian systems at different scales. We find that the obtained constraints for the modified gravity corrections are several orders of magnitude tighter than those available for such effects as gravitational redshift, gravitational time delay and geodetic precession in Solar System.