Evaluation of the precision of using absolute gravimeters to calibrate superconducting gravimeters

peer reviewedWe present an experiment in which four different FG5 absolute gravimeters (AG) were operated simultaneously alongside a superconducting relative gravimeter (SG). We demonstrate that 0.1 % precision can be achieved on the calibration factor of the SG by comparison with AG measurements, independently of the FG5 instrument used for the calibration and of the offsets among the FG5 absolute values. This experiment demonstrates the robustness of using any FG5 absolute gravimeter to calibrate any SG. This result is of value to geoscientists analysing data from (a) globally distributed SGs which most probably have been calibrated using different instruments; or (b) any individual SG calibrated with different FG5 absolute gravimeters