Detecting very-high-frequency relic gravitational waves by electromagnetic wave polarizations in a waveguide

Abstract

The polarization vector (PV) of an electromagnetic wave (EW) will experience a rotation in a region of spacetime perturbed by gravitational waves (GWs). Based on this idea, Cruise's group has built an annular waveguide to detect GWs. We give detailed calculations of the rotations of the polarization vector of an EW caused by incident GWs from various directions and in various polarization states, and then analyze the accumulative effects on the polarization vector when the EW passes n cycles along the annular waveguide. We reexamine the feasibility and limitation of this method to detect GWs of high frequency around 100 MHz, in particular, the relic gravitational waves (RGWs). By comparing the spectrum of RGWs in the accelerating universe with the detector sensitivity of the current waveguide, it is found that the amplitude of the RGWs is too low to be detected by the waveguide detectors currently running. Possible ways of improvements on detection are discussed also.

18pages, 10 figures, accepted by ChJAA

References in corpus (5)

• Relic gravitational waves and their detection
• Relic Gravitational Waves in the Accelerating Universe
• Imprints of Relic Gravitational Waves in Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Analytic spectrum of relic gravitational waves modified by neutrino free streaming and dark energy
• An exact analytic spectrum of relic gravitational waves in an accelerating universe

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Detecting Relic Gravitational Waves by Pulsar Timing Arrays: Effects of Cosmic Phase Transitions and Relativistic Free-Streaming Gases
• Relic Gravitational Waves with A Running Spectral Index and Its Constraints at High Frequencies
• Analytic Spectra of CMB Anisotropies and Polarization Generated by Relic Gravitational Waves with Modification due to Neutrino Free-Streaming
• Using polarized maser to detect high-frequency relic gravitational waves
• Using pulsar timing arrays and the quantum normalization condition to constrain relic gravitational waves
• Relic gravitational waves in the frame of slow-roll inflation with a power-law potential and the detection
• Revisit relic gravitational waves based on the latest CMB observations
• Estimation of spectrum and parameters of relic gravitational waves using space-borne interferometers
• Pulsar Timing Residuals Induced by Gravitational Waves from Single Non-evolving Supermassive Black Hole Binaries with Elliptical Orbits
• A new experiment for the gravitational waves detection
• Imprints of relic gravitational waves on pulsar timing
• Pulsar timing residuals due to individual non-evolving gravitational wave sources