Frame Degeneracy and Sine-quadrature Residuals in Lunar Tidal Modeling
- 1Freie Universität Berlin
Abstract
The dominant Earth–Moon tide is accurately described by Newtonian theory, but interpreting a possible off-diagonal residual requires separating its signature from errors in the standard tidal model. In a local lunar principal frame, the Newtonian plus channel varies as cos ( 2 β ) , whereas a symmetric off-diagonal residual enters the sin ( 2 β ) quadrature. We extend this separation to a globally defined three-dimensional symmetric trace-free tensor with two transverse coefficients projected onto each station vertical. This formulation establishes an exact first-order identifiability limit: lunar-frame errors generate responses indistinguishable from the cross-residual signal, making finite constraints intrinsically prior limited. A joint-prior GLS/Fisher forecast incorporates frame, ephemeris, projection, terrestrial-response, loading, environmental, instrumental, and correlated-network uncertainties. The dimensionless worst-principal-axis uncertainties are 9.513 × 10 ⁻³ , 4.490 × 10 ⁻⁴ , and 4.182 × 10 ⁻⁵ for conservative, moderate, and optimistic synthetic networks. Monte Carlo injection–recovery experiments assess robustness using independent calibration and validation halves. Under the declared response-expanded Stress budget, optimistic formal all-draw coverage falls to 0.317, with a false-positive rate of 0.685; calibrated robust covariance restores held-out coverage to 0.949 and the false-positive rate to 0.051. These results remain conditional on the synthetic assumptions. The Halilsoy cross-polarized sector provides only a local morphology template; no detection or constraint on γ H is claimed. The physical contribution is to establish how a generic lunar cross-residual would enter gravimetric observations and what independent constraints are required to distinguish it from standard tidal-model errors, providing a quantitative foundation for future observational tests.
Versions
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BibTeX
@article{eser2026frame,
title = {{Frame Degeneracy and Sine-quadrature Residuals in Lunar Tidal Modeling}},
author = {Muhittin Cenk Eser},
journal = {The Astrophysical Journal},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.3847/1538-4357/aeacd5},
url = {https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aeacd5},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Frame Degeneracy and Sine-quadrature Residuals in Lunar Tidal Modeling
AU - Muhittin Cenk Eser
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
JO - The Astrophysical Journal
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/aeacd5
UR - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aeacd5
AB - The dominant Earth–Moon tide is accurately described by Newtonian theory, but interpreting a possible off-diagonal residual requires separating its signature from errors in the standard tidal model. In a local lunar principal frame, the Newtonian plus channel varies as cos ( 2 β ) , whereas a symmetric off-diagonal residual enters the sin ( 2 β ) quadrature. We extend this separation to a globally defined three-dimensional symmetric trace-free tensor with two transverse coefficients projected onto each station vertical. This formulation establishes an exact first-order identifiability limit: lunar-frame errors generate responses indistinguishable from the cross-residual signal, making finite constraints intrinsically prior limited. A joint-prior GLS/Fisher forecast incorporates frame, ephemeris, projection, terrestrial-response, loading, environmental, instrumental, and correlated-network uncertainties. The dimensionless worst-principal-axis uncertainties are 9.513 × 10 ⁻³ , 4.490 × 10 ⁻⁴ , and 4.182 × 10 ⁻⁵ for conservative, moderate, and optimistic synthetic networks. Monte Carlo injection–recovery experiments assess robustness using independent calibration and validation halves. Under the declared response-expanded Stress budget, optimistic formal all-draw coverage falls to 0.317, with a false-positive rate of 0.685; calibrated robust covariance restores held-out coverage to 0.949 and the false-positive rate to 0.051. These results remain conditional on the synthetic assumptions. The Halilsoy cross-polarized sector provides only a local morphology template; no detection or constraint on γ H is claimed. The physical contribution is to establish how a generic lunar cross-residual would enter gravimetric observations and what independent constraints are required to distinguish it from standard tidal-model errors, providing a quantitative foundation for future observational tests.
SN - 1538-4357
SN - 0004-637X
ER -