2002/09/30 by Thomas A. Prince, Massimo Tinto, Shane L. Larson +1 · 293 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomical interferometer #Atom interferometer #Doppler effect #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Gravitational wave #Interferometry #Inverse #Mathematics #Michelson interferometer #Observable #Optics #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Sensitivity (control systems) #Space (punctuation) #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.66.122002
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 66(12) (American Physical Society) · Equation (20) of the previous version contained a typographical error, which now has been corrected. The final results of the paper are unchanged
openalex publication_date 2002/12/17 · arxiv created 2003/06/04 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The multiple Doppler readouts available on the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) permit simultaneous formation of several interferometric observables. All these observables are independent of laser frequency fluctuations and have different couplings to gravitational waves and to the various LISA instrumental noises. Within the functional space of interferometric combinations LISA will be able to synthesize, we have identified a triplet of interferometric combinations that show optimally combined sensitivity. As an application of the method, we computed the sensitivity improvement for sinusoidal sources in the nominal, equal-arm LISA configuration. In the part of the Fourier band where the period of the wave is longer than the typical light travel-time across LISA, the sensitivity gain over a single Michelson interferometer is equal to √(2). In the mid-band region, where the LISA Michelson combination has its best sensitivity, the improvement over the Michelson sensitivity is slightly better than √(2), and the frequency band of best sensitivity is broadened. For frequencies greater than the reciprocal of the light travel-time, the sensitivity improvement is oscillatory and \ensuremath∼√(3), but can be greater than √(3) near frequencies that are integer multiples of the inverse of the one-way light travel-time in the LISA arm.