Relativistic geoid: Gravity potential and relativistic effects

verfasst von
Dennis Philipp, Eva Hackmann, Claus Lämmerzahl, Jürgen Müller
Abstract

The Earth's geoid is one of the most essential and fundamental concepts to provide a gravity field-related height reference in geodesy and associated sciences. To keep up with the ever-increasing experimental capabilities and to consistently interpret high-precision measurements without any doubt, a relativistic treatment of geodetic notions (including the geoid) within Einstein's theory of general relativity is inevitable. Building on the theoretical construction of isochronometric surfaces and the so-called redshift potential for clock comparison, we define a relativistic gravity potential as a generalization of (post-)Newtonian notions. This potential exists in any stationary configuration with rigidly corotating observers, and it is the same as realized by local plumb lines. In a second step, we employ the gravity potential to define the relativistic geoid in direct analogy to the Newtonian understanding. In the respective limit, the framework allows to recover well-known (post-) Newtonian results. For a better illustration and proper interpretation of the general relativistic gravity potential and geoid, some particular examples are considered. Explicit results are derived for exact vacuum solutions to Einstein's field equation as well as a parametrized post-Newtonian model. Comparing the Earth's Newtonian geoid to its relativistic generalization is a very subtle problem, but of high interest. An isometric embedding into Euclidean three-dimensional space is an appropriate solution and allows a genuinely intrinsic comparison. With this method, the leading-order differences are determined, which are at the mm level.

Organisationseinheit(en)
Institut für Erdmessung
QuantumFrontiers
Externe Organisation(en)
Universität Bremen
Fraunhofer-Institut für Bildgestützte Medizin (MEVIS)
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
Typ
Artikel
Journal
Physical Review D
Band
101
Anzahl der Seiten
16
ISSN
2470-0010
Publikationsdatum
17.03.2020
Publikationsstatus
Veröffentlicht
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Physik und Astronomie (sonstige)
Elektronische Version(en)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.10159 (Zugang: Offen)
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.101.064032 (Zugang: Geschlossen)
 

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