Upper limit on the amplitude of gravitational waves around 0.1Hz from the Global Positioning System

Abstract

The global positioning system (GPS) is composed of thirty one satellites having atomic clocks with $10^{-15}$ accuracy on board and enables one to calibrate the primary standard for frequency on the ground. Using the fact that oscillators on the ground have been successfully stabilized with high accuracy by receiving radio waves emitted from the GPS satellites, we set a constraint on the strain amplitude of the gravitational wave background $h_{\mathrm{c}}$. We find that the GPS has already placed a meaningful constraint, and the constraint on the continuous component of gravitational waves is given as $h_{\mathrm{c}}<4.8\times 10^{-12}(1/f)$ at $10^{-2}\lesssim f\lesssim 10^0$ Hz, for stabilized oscillators with $\Delta \nu /\nu \simeq 10^{-12}$. Thanks to the advantage of the Doppler tracking method, seismic oscillations do not affect the current constraint. Constraints on $h_c$ in the same frequency range from the velocity measurements by the lunar explorers in the Apollo mission are also derived.

6 pages, 2figures, Accepted for the publication in Physical Review D

References in corpus (7)

• LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
• Upper bounds on the low-frequency stochastic gravitational wave background from pulsar timing observations: current limits and future prospects
• A new cosmic microwave background constraint to primordial gravitational waves
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• Space laser interferometers can determine the thermal history of the early Universe
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• Upper Limit on a Stochastic Background of Gravitational Waves from Seismic Measurements in the Range 0.05 Hz to 1 Hz

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• Constraining the stochastic gravitational wave background using the future lunar seismometers
• Chang'e 3 lunar mission and upper limit on stochastic background of gravitational wave around the 0.01 Hz band
• Testing Gravity with Pulsar Scintillation Measurements
• Search for a stochastic gravitational wave background at 1-5 Hz with Torsion-bar Antenna