Viscoelastic effects in a spherical Gravitational Wave antenna
arXiv:gr-qc/9802018
Abstract
Internal friction effects are responsible for line widening of the resonance frequencies in spherical gravitational wave detectors, and result in exponentially damped oscillations of its eigenmodes with a decay time which is proportional to the quality factor of the mode and to its inverse frequency. We study the solutions to the equations of motion for a viscoelastic spherical GW detector based on various different assumptions about the material's constituent equations. Quality factor dependence on mode frequency is determined in each case, and a discussion of its applicability to actual detectors is made.
16 pages, 3 PS figures, REVTeX, submitted to GRG journal