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The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna is a foreseen gravitational wave detector, which aims to detect 10−20 strains in the frequency range from 0.1 mHz to 0.1 Hz. It is a triangular constellation, with equal sides of m, of three spacecraft, where heterodyne interferometry measures the spacecraft distances. The stray light from the powerful transmitted beam can overlap with the received one and interfere with the heterodyne signal. We investigated the contribution of random phase variations of the stray photons to the noise of the heterodyne signal. A balanced detection scheme more effectively mitigates this adverse effect than a separation of the frequencies of the transmitted and local radiation. In the balanced scheme, in order to limit the phase noise to picometer level, the incoherent power of the stray light must be kept below about 10 nW W−1 for an asymmetry of the recombination beam splitter of 1%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The laser interferometer space antenna is a foreseen space-based gravitational wave detector, which aims to detect 10−20 strains in the frequency range from 0.1 mHz to 1 Hz. It is a triangular constellation of three spacecraft, with equal sides of m, where every spacecraft hosts a pair of telescopes that simultaneously transmit and receive laser beams measuring the constellation arms by heterodyning the received wavefronts with local references. Due to the spacecraft and constellation jitters, the interfering (received and local) wavefronts become misaligned. We investigate analytically the coupling between misalignments and aberrations of the interfering wavefronts and estimate the relevant contribution to the noise of the heterodyne signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a gravitational wave detector, which aims to detect 10−20 strains in the frequency range from 0.1 mHz to 0.1 Hz. It is a constellation of three spacecrafts, an equilateral triangle with side length of m, where interferometry monitors the spacecraft distances. Aberrations and jitter of the wavefront sent by a spacecraft to the next combine to cause a measurement noise. The paper investigates analytically this coupling, including beam clipping and far-field propagation, and develops criteria for the assessment of the wavefront quality. It also gives the results of Monte Carlo simulations of the measurement noise for arbitrary wavefront aberrations and jitters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna aims to measure picometer changes of the 2.5 × 10 6 km sides of a triangular constellation of satellites. Each spacecraft hosts two telescopes that simultaneously transmit and receive laser beams measuring the constellation arms by heterodyning the received wavefronts with local references. We report an end-to-end investigation of the measurement noise due to the interaction between the telescope jitters and wavefront aberrations. With provisional design parameters, to achieve the targeted sensitivity the root-mean-square aberrations must be less than λ/65.