Improved optical ranging for space based gravitational wave detection

Andrew J. Sutton*, Kirk McKenzie, Brent Ware, Glenn De Vine, Robert E. Spero, W. Klipstein, Daniel A. Shaddock

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    10 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The operation of 106 km scale laser interferometers in space will permit the detection of gravitational waves at previously unaccessible frequency regions. Multi-spacecraft missions, such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), will use time delay interferometry to suppress the otherwise dominant laser frequency noise from their measurements. This is accomplished by performing sub-sample interpolation of the optical phase measurements recorded at each spacecraft for synchronization and cancellation of the otherwise dominant laser frequency noise. These sub-sample interpolation time shifts are dependent upon the inter-spacecraft range and will be measured using a pseudo-random noise ranging modulation upon the science laser. One limit to the ranging performance is mutual interference between the outgoing and incoming ranging signals upon each spacecraft. This paper reports on the demonstration of a noise cancellation algorithm which is shown to providing a factor of ∼8 suppression of the mutual interference noise. Demonstration of the algorithm in an optical test bed showed an rms ranging error of 0.06 m, improved from 0.19 m in previous results, surpassing the 1 m RMS LISA specification and potentially improving the cancellation of laser frequency noise.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number075008
    JournalClassical and Quantum Gravity
    Volume30
    Issue number7
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 7 Apr 2013

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