Session J9 - Experimental Gravity and Gravitational Radiation.
FOCUS session, Sunday afternoon, April 29
Room 2, Renaissance Hotel
Unlike ground-based gravitational wave interferometers, space-based systems such as LISA will not be rigid structures, and the armlengths will change with time. In the case where the length of the arms in the interferometer can vary, it is not possible to use a standard interferometer signal because the major source of noise in the instrument, namely laser phase noise, does not cancel out. Using the method of Tinto and Armstrong, a more complicated signal can be constructed where laser phase noise exactly cancels out in an unequal arm interferometer. We will examine the case where the ratio of the armlengths is a variable parameter, and demonstrate that this ratio has important consequences for the overall sensitivity of the observatory.