Optimal design of calibration signals in space-borne gravitational wave detectors

Abstract

Future space-borne gravitational wave detectors will require a precise definition of calibration signals to ensure the achievement of their design sensitivity. The careful design of the test signals plays a key role in the correct understanding and characterization of these instruments. In that sense, methods achieving optimal experiment designs must be considered as complementary to the parameter estimation methods being used to determine the parameters describing the system. The relevance of experiment design is particularly significant for the LISA Pathfinder mission, which will spend most of its operation time performing experiments to characterize key technologies for future space-borne gravitational wave observatories. Here we propose a framework to derive the optimal signals-in terms of minimum parameter uncertainty-to be injected into these instruments during the calibration phase. We compare our results with an alternative numerical algorithm which achieves an optimal input signal by iteratively improving an initial guess. We show agreement of both approaches when applied to the LISA Pathfinder case.

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission in Greece White Paper

“…In particular, the modules under development are focusing on the orbits of the constellation, the instrumental noises and the instrument calibration, the time delay interferometry algorithms [21,22], and finally the response of the antenna to the GW signals. A great portion of this work, especially for the case of the models of the instrumental noises, has been inherited by the LISA Pathfinder mission [23,[25][26][27][28]. Finally, it provides support for different Consortium needs (organizational and/or tools for computing scientific figures of merit of the mission), and most importantly, the design of the Distributed Data Processing Centres.…”