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Unequal Arm Space-Borne Gravitational Wave Detectors, Shane L. Larson, Ronald W. Hellings, William A. Hiscock
Unequal Arm Space-Borne Gravitational Wave Detectors, Shane L. Larson, Ronald W. Hellings, William A. Hiscock
All Physics Faculty Publications
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 …
Sensitivity Curves For Spaceborne Gravitational Wave Interferometers, Shane L. Larson, William A. Hiscock, Ronald W. Hellings
Sensitivity Curves For Spaceborne Gravitational Wave Interferometers, Shane L. Larson, William A. Hiscock, Ronald W. Hellings
All Physics Faculty Publications
To determine whether particular sources of gravitational radiation will be detectable by a specific gravitational wave detector, it is necessary to know the sensitivity limits of the instrument. These instrumental sensitivities are often depicted (after averaging over source position and polarization) by graphing the minimal values of the gravitational wave amplitude detectable by the instrument versus the frequency of the gravitational wave. This paper describes in detail how to compute such a sensitivity curve given a set of specifications for a spaceborne laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory. Minor errors in the prior literature are corrected, and the first (mostly) analytic …