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Weak-light phase locking for LISA

Paul W McNamara

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The long armlengths of the LISA interferometer, and the finite aperture of the telescope, lead to an optical power attenuation of ~10−10 of the transmitted to received light. Simple reflection at the end of the arm is therefore not an optimum interferometric design. Instead, a local laser is offset phase locked to the weak incoming beam, transferring the phase information of the incoming to the outgoing light. This paper reports on an experiment to characterize a weak-light phase-locking scheme suitable for LISA in which a diode-pumped, Nd:YAG, non-planar ring oscillator (NPRO) is offset phase locked to a low-power (13 pW) frequency stabilized master NPRO. Preliminary results of the relative phase noise of the slave laser shows shot noise limited performance above 0.4 Hz. Excess noise is observed at lower frequencies, most probably due to thermal effects in the optical arrangement and phase-sensing electronics.


PACS

04.80.Nn Gravitational wave detectors and experiments

95.55.Ym Gravitational radiation detectors; mass spectrometers; and other instrumentation and techniques

07.60.Ly Interferometers

MSC

83C35 Gravitational waves

Subjects

Instrumentation and measurement

Gravitation and cosmology

Astrophysics and astroparticles

Dates

Issue 10 (21 May 2005)

Received 3 November 2004

Published 21 April 2005



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