Time-Delay Interferometry with optical frequency comb

Abstract

Heterodyne laser phase measurements in a space-based gravitational wave interferometer are degraded by the phase fluctuations of the onboard clocks, resulting in unacceptable sensitivity performance levels of the interferometric data. In order to calibrate out the clock phase noises it has been previously suggested that additional inter-spacecraft phase measurements must be performed by modulating the laser beams. This technique, however, considerably increases system complexity and probability of subsystem failure. With the advent of self-referenced optical frequency combs, it is possible to generate the heterodyne microwave signal that is coherently referenced to the onboard laser. We show in this case that the microwave noise can be cancelled directly by applying modified second-generation Time-Delay Interferometric combinations to the heterodyne phase measurements. This approach avoids use of modulated laser beams as well as the need of additional ultra-stable oscillator clocks.

32 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Temporal solitons in optical microresonators

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Time-Delay Interferometry and Clock-Noise Calibration
• Sensitivity functions for space-borne gravitational wave detectors
• Refined clock-jitter reduction in the Sagnac-type time-delay interferometry combinations
• Geometric approach for the modified second generation time delay interferometry
• A combinatorial algebraic approach for the modified second-generation time-delay interferometry
• Arm locking using laser frequency comb
• Arm locking in conjunction with time-delay interferometry
• Alternative approach to time-delay interferometry with optical frequency comb
• Searching systematically for coupling of laser and phase-modulation noise in heterodyne interferometry