Optical interferometer in space
- Author
- Stebbins, R. T.
- Published
- Aug 1, 1989.
- Physical Description
- 1 electronic document
- Additional Creators
- Hils, D., Bender, Peter L., Vincent, Mark A., Faller, J. E., and Hall, J. L.
Online Version
- hdl.handle.net , Connect to this object online.
- Restrictions on Access
- Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available.
Free-to-read Unrestricted online access - Summary
- The present design concepts for a Laser Gravitational Wave Observatory in Space are described. Laser heterodyne distance measurements are made between test masses located in three spacecraft separated by roughly 10(exp 6) km. The major technology issues are: the reduction of spurious acceleration noise for the test masses to below 2 x 10(exp -15) cm/sq sec/Hz(0.5) from 10(exp -5) to 10(exp -3) Hz; and the measurement of changes in the difference of the antenna arm lengths to 5 x 10(exp -11) cm/Hz(0.5) from 10(exp -3) to 1 Hz with high reliability. The science objectives are: to measure discrete sinusoidal gravitational wave signals from individual sources with periods of 1 second to 1 day; to measure the stochastic background due to unresolved binaries; and to search for gravitational wave pulses with periods longer than 1 sec from possible exotic sources such as gravitational collapse of very massive objects.
- Other Subject(s)
- Collection
- NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
- Note
- Document ID: 19900010637.
Accession ID: 90N19953.
NASA, Relativistic Gravitational Experiments in Space; p 80-88. - Terms of Use and Reproduction
- No Copyright.
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