This technique is based on the Michelson interferometer and is particularly suited to the detection of gravitational waves as they have a quadrupole nature. Waves propagating perpendicular to the plane of the interferometer will result in one arm of the interferometer being increased in length while the other arm is decreased and vice versa. The induced change in the length of the interferometer arms results in a small change in the intensity of the light observed at the interferometer output.
As will be explained in detail in the next chapter, the sensitivity of an interferometric gravitational wave detector is limited by noise from various sources. Taking this frequency dependent noise floor into account, the American LIGO 1 detector will have a sensitivity (shown in Fig. 3), which would allow a reasonable probability for detecting gravitational wave sources. In order to observe a full range of sources and to initiate gravitational wave astronomy, a sensitivity or noise performance approximately ten times better in the mid-frequency range and several orders of magnitude better at 10 Hz, is desired. Such a performance is planned for a future LIGO upgrade, LIGO 2.
For the initial interferometric detectors we require a noise
floor in strain close to
to be achieved. For an earth based detector the distance between
the test masses is limited to a few km by geographical and cost
factors. If we assume an arm length of 3 to 4 km, detecting
a strain in space of the above level implies measuring a residual
motion of each of the test masses of about
over part of the operating range of the detector, which may be
from
10 Hz to a few kHz. This sets an formidable goal for
the optical detection system at the output of the
interferometer.
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Gravitational Wave Detection by Interferometry (Ground
and Space)
Sheila Rowan and Jim Hough http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2000-3 © Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. ISSN 1433-8351 Problems/Comments to livrev@aei-potsdam.mpg.de |