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Space-borne gravitational wave observatories

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Abstract

The paper describes the progress toward a space-borne gravitational wave observatory and its foreseeable science potential. In particular the paper describes the status of the LISA-like mission called eLISA, the reference mission for the Gravitational Universe theme adopted by ESA for its Large mission L3, and the status of its precursor LISA Pathfinder, due to launch in 2015.

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Notes

  1. In addition to those effect, the signal would also carry the large frequency drift due to the secular change of the length of the arm. This signal is out of the measurement band of the instrument and is effectively suppressed by the data processing.

  2. Forces in the following are always intended per unit mass. To stress this, we prefer to indicate forces by using the symbol g instead of the more obvious f like in force.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Karsten Danzmann, Paul McNamara and Bill Weber for their critical reading of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Trento, 38123 , Povo, Trento, Italy

    Stefano Vitale

  2. INFN Trento Institute for Fundamental Physics and Application, Trento, Italy

    Stefano Vitale

Authors
  1. Stefano Vitale
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Correspondence to Stefano Vitale.

Additional information

Stefano Vitale for the eLISA consortium and the LISA Pathfinder team.

This article belongs to the Topical Collection: The First Century of General Relativity: GR20/Amaldi10.

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Vitale, S. Space-borne gravitational wave observatories. Gen Relativ Gravit 46, 1730 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-014-1730-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-014-1730-2

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