Recently, with an enlighting treatment, Baskaran and Grishchuk have shown the
presence and importance of the so-called ``magnetic'' components of
gravitational waves (GWs), which have to be taken into account in the context
of the total response functions of interferometers for GWs propagating from
arbitrary directions. In this paper the analysis of the response functions for
the magnetic components is generalized in its full frequency dependence, while
in the work of Baskaran and Grishchuk the response functions were computed only
in the approximation of wavelength much larger than the linear dimensions of
the interferometer. It is also shown that the response functions to the
magnetic components grow at high frequencies, differently from the values of
the response functions to the well known ordinary components that decrease at
high frequencies. Thus the magnetic components could in principle become the
dominant part of the signal at high frequencies. This is important for a
potential detection of the signal at high frequencies and confirms that the
magnetic contributions must be taken into account in the data analysis. More,
the fact that the response functions of the magnetic components grow at high
frequencies shows that, in principle, the frequency-range of Earth-based
interferometers could extend to frequencies over 10000 Hz.Comment: Accepted for the International Journal of Modern Physics