The Effect of Solar Oscillations on Space Gravitational Wave Experiments

Abstract

The proposed space gravitational wave detectors LISA and OMEGA, typically consist of six spacecraft located in pairs at the corners of an equilateral triangle; the triangular configuration is kept stable by careful choice of the spacecraft orbits. The two spacecraft at each vertex are phase locked through the exchange of a reference signal. Each spacecraft sends a laser beam to one of the distant spacecraft where the signal is received and coherently transponded back; the interferometer readout is eventually obtained by interfering the incoming signal with the outgoing one. This Michelson-type interferometer will be sensitive to the passage of gravitational waves in the frequency range below 1 Hz, a range currently inaccessible on the ground due to seismic noise.