80 research outputs found
Time Domain Simulations of Arm Locking in LISA
Arm locking is a technique that has been proposed for reducing laser
frequency fluctuations in the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a
gravitational-wave observatory sensitive in the milliHertz frequency band. Arm
locking takes advantage of the geometric stability of the triangular
constellation of three spacecraft that comprise LISA to provide a frequency
reference with a stability in the LISA measurement band that exceeds that
available from a standard reference such as an optical cavity or molecular
absorption line. We have implemented a time-domain simulation of arm locking
including the expected limiting noise sources (shot noise, clock noise,
spacecraft jitter noise, and residual laser frequency noise). The effect of
imperfect a priori knowledge of the LISA heterodyne frequencies and the
associated 'pulling' of an arm locked laser is included. We find that our
implementation meets requirements both on the noise and dynamic range of the
laser frequency.Comment: Revised to address reviewer comments. Accepted by Phys. Rev.
Extracting galactic binary signals from the first round of Mock LISA Data Challenges
We report on the performance of an end-to-end Bayesian analysis pipeline for
detecting and characterizing galactic binary signals in simulated LISA data.
Our principal analysis tool is the Blocked-Annealed Metropolis Hasting (BAM)
algorithm, which has been optimized to search for tens of thousands of
overlapping signals across the LISA band. The BAM algorithm employs Bayesian
model selection to determine the number of resolvable sources, and provides
posterior distribution functions for all the model parameters. The BAM
algorithm performed almost flawlessly on all the Round 1 Mock LISA Data
Challenge data sets, including those with many highly overlapping sources. The
only misses were later traced to a coding error that affected high frequency
sources. In addition to the BAM algorithm we also successfully tested a Genetic
Algorithm (GA), but only on data sets with isolated signals as the GA has yet
to be optimized to handle large numbers of overlapping signals.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Proceedings of GWDAW-11 (Berlin,
Dec. '06
LISA data analysis I: Doppler demodulation
The orbital motion of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) produces
amplitude, phase and frequency modulation of a gravitational wave signal. The
modulations have the effect of spreading a monochromatic gravitational wave
signal across a range of frequencies. The modulations encode useful information
about the source location and orientation, but they also have the deleterious
affect of spreading a signal across a wide bandwidth, thereby reducing the
strength of the signal relative to the instrument noise. We describe a simple
method for removing the dominant, Doppler, component of the signal modulation.
The demodulation reassembles the power from a monochromatic source into a
narrow spike, and provides a quick way to determine the sky locations and
frequencies of the brightest gravitational wave sources.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures. References and new comments adde
Silicon Carbide Telescope Investigations for the LISA Mission
Space-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors are conceived to detect GWs in the low frequency range (mili-Hertz) by measuring the distance between free-falling proof masses in spacecraft (SC) separated by 5 Gm. The reference in the last decade has been the joint ESA-NASA mission LISA. One of the key elements of LISA is the telescope since it simultaneously gathers the light coming from the far SC (approximately or equal to 100 pW) and expands, collimates and sends the outgoing beam (2 W) to the far SC. Demanding requirements have been imposed on the telescope structure: the dimensional stability of the telescope must be approximately or equal to 1pm Hz(exp1/2) at 3 mHz and the distance between the primary and the secondary mirrors must change by less than 2.5 micrometer over the mission lifetime to prevent defocussing. In addition the telescope structure must be light, strong and stiff. For this reason a potential on-axis telescope structure for LISA consisting of a silicon carbide (SiC) quadpod structure has been designed, constructed and tested. The coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) in the LISA expected temperature range has been measured with a 1% accuracy which allows us to predict the shrinkage/expansion of the telescope due to temperature changes, and pico-meter dimensional stability has been measured at room temperature and at the expected operating temperature for the LISA telescope (around -6[deg]C). This work is supported by NASA Grants NNX10AJ38G and NX11AO26G
Note: Silicon Carbide Telescope Dimensional Stability for Space-based Gravitational Wave Detectors
Space-based gravitational wave detectors are conceived to detect gravitational waves in the low frequency range by measuring the distance between proof masses in spacecraft separated by millions of kilometers. One of the key elements is the telescope which has to have a dimensional stability better than 1 pm Hz(exp 1/2) at 3 mHz. In addition, the telescope structure must be light, strong, and stiff. For this reason a potential telescope structure consisting of a silicon carbide quadpod has been designed, constructed, and tested. We present dimensional stability results meeting the requirements at room temperature. Results at 60 C are also shown although the requirements are not met due to temperature fluctuations in the setup
A Three-Stage Search for Supermassive Black Hole Binaries in LISA Data
Gravitational waves from the inspiral and coalescence of supermassive
black-hole (SMBH) binaries with masses ~10^6 Msun are likely to be among the
strongest sources for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). We
describe a three-stage data-analysis pipeline designed to search for and
measure the parameters of SMBH binaries in LISA data. The first stage uses a
time-frequency track-search method to search for inspiral signals and provide a
coarse estimate of the black-hole masses m_1, m_2 and of the coalescence time
of the binary t_c. The second stage uses a sequence of matched-filter template
banks, seeded by the first stage, to improve the measurement accuracy of the
masses and coalescence time. Finally, a Markov Chain Monte Carlo search is used
to estimate all nine physical parameters of the binary. Using results from the
second stage substantially shortens the Markov Chain burn-in time and allows us
to determine the number of SMBH-binary signals in the data before starting
parameter estimation. We demonstrate our analysis pipeline using simulated data
from the first LISA Mock Data Challenge. We discuss our plan for improving this
pipeline and the challenges that will be faced in real LISA data analysis.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Proceedings of GWDAW-11 (Berlin,
Dec. '06
Modulator noise suppression in the LISA Time-Delay Interferometric combinations
We previously showed how the measurements of some eighteen time series of
relative frequency or phase shifts could be combined (1) to cancel the phase
noise of the lasers, (2) to cancel the Doppler fluctuations due to non-inertial
motions of the six optical benches, and (3) to remove the phase noise of the
onboard reference oscillators required to track the photodetector fringes, all
the while preserving signals from passinggravitational waves. Here we analyze
the effect of the additional noise due to the optical modulators used for
removing the phase fluctuations of the onboard reference oscillators. We use a
recently measured noise spectrum of an individual modulator to quantify the
contribution of modulator noise to the first and second-generation Time-Delay
Interferometric (TDI) combinations as a function of the modulation frequency.
We show that modulator noise can be made smaller than the expected proof-mass
acceleration and optical-path noises if the modulation frequencies are larger
than MHz in the case of the unequal-arm Michelson TDI combination
, GHz for the Sagnac TDI combination , and
MHz for the symmetrical Sagnac TDI combination . These
modulation frequencies are substantially smaller than previously estimated and
may lead to less stringent requirements on the LISA's oscillator noise
calibration subsystem.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to: Phys. Rev. D 1
Precision Lunar Laser Ranging For Lunar and Gravitational Science
Laser ranging to retroreflector arrays placed on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts and the Soviet Lunar missions over the past 39 years have dramatically increased our understanding of gravitational physics along with Earth and Moon geophysics, geodesy, and dynamics. Significant advances in these areas will require placing modern retroreflectors and/or active laser ranging systems at new locations on the lunar surface. Ranging to new locations will enable better measurements of the lunar librations, aiding in our understanding of the interior structure of the moon. More precise range measurements will allow us to study effects that are too small to be observed by the current capabilities as well as enabling more stringent tests of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Setting up retroreflectors was a key part of the Apollo missions so it is natural to ask if future lunar missions should include them as well. The Apollo retroreflectors are still being used today, and nearly 40 years of ranging data has been invaluable for scientific as well as other studies such as orbital dynamics. However, the available retroreflectors all lie within 26 degrees latitude of the equator, and the most useful ones within 24 degrees longitude of the sub-earth meridian. This clustering weakens their geometrical strength
Pressure-Tuneable Visible-Range Band Gap in the Ionic Spinel Tin Nitride
The application of pressure allows systematic tuning of the charge density of a material cleanly, that is, without changes to the chemical composition via dopants, and exploratory high-pressure experiments can inform the design of bulk syntheses of materials that benefit from their properties under compression. The electronic and structural response of semiconducting tin nitride Sn3N4 under compression is now reported. A continuous opening of the optical band gap was observed from 1.3 eV to 3.0 eV over a range of 100 GPa, a 540 nm blue-shift spanning the entire visible spectrum. The pressure-mediated band gap opening is general to this material across numerous high-density polymorphs, implicating the predominant ionic bonding in the material as the cause. The rate of decompression to ambient conditions permits access to recoverable metastable states with varying band gaps energies, opening the possibility of pressure-tuneable electronic properties for future applications
Search for a stochastic gravitational-wave signal in the second round of the Mock LISA Data Challenges
The analysis method currently proposed to search for isotropic stochastic
radiation of primordial or astrophysical origin with the Laser Interferometer
Space Antenna (LISA) relies on the combined use of two LISA channels, one of
which is insensitive to gravitational waves, such as the symmetrised Sagnac.
For this method to work, it is essential to know how the instrumental noise
power in the two channels are related to one another; however, no quantitative
estimates of this key information are available to date. The purpose of our
study is to assess the performance of the symmetrised Sagnac method for
different levels of prior information regarding the instrumental noise. We
develop a general approach in the framework of Bayesian inference and an
end-to-end analysis algorithm based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to
compute the posterior probability density functions of the relevant model
parameters. We apply this method to data released as part of the second round
of the Mock LISA Data Challenges. For the selected (and somewhat idealised)
cases considered here, we find that a prior uncertainty of a factor ~2 in the
ratio between the power of the instrumental noise contributions in the two
channels allows for the detection of isotropic stochastic radiation. More
importantly, we provide a framework for more realistic studies of LISA's
performance and development of analysis techniques in the context of searches
for stochastic signals.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, GWDAW12 conference proceeding
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