Earth-moon Lagrangian points as a test bed for general relativity and effective field theories of gravity

We first analyze the restricted four-body problem consisting of the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun as the primaries and a spacecraft as the planetoid. This scheme allows us to take into account the solar perturbation in the description of the motion of a spacecraft in the vicinity of the stable Earth-Moon libration points L-4 and L-5 both in the classical regime and in the context of effective field theories of gravity. A vehicle initially placed at L-4 or L-5 will not remain near the respective points. In particular, in the classical case the vehicle moves on a trajectory about the libration points for at least 700 days before escaping. We show that this is true also if the modified long-distance Newtonian potential of effective gravity is employed. We also evaluate the impulse required to cancel out the perturbing force due to the Sun in order to force the spacecraft to stay precisely at L-4 or L-5. It turns out that this value is slightly modified with respect to the corresponding Newtonian one. In the second part of the paper, we first evaluate the location of all Lagrangian points in the Earth-Moon system within the framework of general relativity. For the points L-4 and L-5, the corrections of coordinates are of order a few millimeters and describe a tiny departure from the equilateral triangle. After that, we set up a scheme where the theory which is quantum corrected has as its classical counterpart the Einstein theory, instead of the Newtonian one. In other words, we deal with a theory involving quantum corrections to Einstein gravity, rather than to Newtonian gravity. By virtue of the effective-gravity correction to the long-distance form of the potential among two masses, all terms involving the ratio between the gravitational radius of the primary and its separation from the planetoid get modified. Within this framework, for the Lagrangian points of stable equilibrium, we find quantum corrections of order 2 mm, whereas for Lagrangian points of unstable equilibrium we find quantum corrections below a millimeter. In the latter case, for the point L-1, general relativity corrects Newtonian theory by 7.61 m, comparable, as an order of magnitude, with the lunar geodesic precession of about 3 m per orbit. The latter is a cumulative effect accurately measured at the centimeter level through the lunar laser ranging positioning technique. Thus, it is possible to study a new laser ranging test of general relativity to measure the 7.61 m correction to the L-1 Lagrangian point, an observable never used before in the Sun-Earth-Moon system. Performing such an experiment requires controlling the propulsion to precisely reach L-1, using an instrumental accuracy comparable to the measurement of the lunar geodesic precession, and understanding systematic effects resulting from thermal radiation and multibody gravitational perturbations. This will then be the basis to consider a second-generation experiment to study deviations of effective field theories of gravity from general relativity in the Sun-Earth-Moon system.