All Physics Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Physical Review D

Volume

66

Issue

6

Publication Date

2002

First Page

062001

Arxiv Identifier

arXiv:gr-qc/0206081v1

Abstract

Unlike ground-based interferometric gravitational wave detectors, large space-based systems will not be rigid structures. When the end stations of the laser interferometer are freely flying spacecraft, the armlengths will change due to variations in the spacecraft positions along their orbital trajectories, so the precise equality of the arms that is required in a laboratory interferometer to cancel laser phase noise is not possible. However, using a method discovered by Tinto and Armstrong, a signal can be constructed in which laser phase noise exactly cancels out, even in an unequal arm interferometer. We examine the case where the ratio of the armlengths is a variable parameter, and compute the averaged gravitational wave transfer function as a function of that parameter. Example sensitivity curve calculations are presented for the expected design parameters of the proposed LISA interferometer, comparing it to a similar instrument with one arm shortened by a factor of 100, showing how the ratio of the armlengths will affect the overall sensitivity of the instrument.

Comments

Published by the American Physical Society in Physical Review D. Publisher PDF available through remote link.

Author e-print is deposited in arXiv.org.

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