The Effect of Spacetime Stretching on Interferometeric Gravity Wave Antennas

Abstract

This paper gives a new physically informative method of a solution of the interferometric gravity wave detection problem; it thus is relevant to LIGO and LISA. Using Maxwell's equations in a general relativistic setting with a “generalized” metric, it gives the solution in closed form under conditions that obtain in most physically interesting situations. This paper augments and makes more precise the discussion of the principles of the stretching of space-time found in a companion preprint (“when Space-time Stretches, What Stretches and What Doesn't?”). An appendix gives a more direct algebraic solution to the problem including the Christoffel symbols for the gravity wave metric.