Preliminary sensitivity study for a gravitational redshift measurement with China’s Lunar exploration project

• DOI: 10.1088/1361-6382/ad4ae2
• Publication Date: 2024-05-13T23:03:10Z
• Authors: Cheng-Gang Qin; Tong Liu; Xiao-Yi Dai; Peng-Bin Guo; Weisheng Huang; Xiang-Pei Liu; Yu-Jie Tan; Cheng-Gang Shao
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 03 medical and health sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract General relativity (GR) is a highly successful theory that describes gravity as geometric phenomenon. The gravitational redshift, classic test of GR, can potentially be violated in alternative theories, and experimental tests on this effect are crucial for our understanding gravity. In paper, considering the space-ground clock comparisons with free-space links, we discuss high-precision Doppler cancellation-based measurement model testing redshift. This effectively reduce various sources error noise, reducing influences first-order effect, atmospheric delay, Shapiro etc. China’s Lunar Exploration Project (CLEP) proposed to equip deep-space H maser daily stability <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>15</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> , which provides an approach Based simulation, analyze comparison experiments CLEP experiment, simulation analysis demonstrates under ideal condition onboard H-maser frequency offset drift, experiment may reach uncertainty <mml:mn>3.7</mml:mn> <mml:mn>6</mml:mn> after session 60 days. Our results demonstrate if issue drift solved, missions have potential redshift high accuracy.