Hannover 2010 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 49: Precision Measurements and Metrology VI

Q 49.7: Talk

Thursday, March 11, 2010, 15:30–15:45, A 310

Inter-spacecraft 2 GHz clock-tone transmission with high phase fidelity at ultra low frequencies — •Simon Barke, Michael Tröbs, Gerhard Heinzel, and Karsten Danzmann — Albert Einstein Institute, Hannover, Germany

Gravitational waves, predicted by Albert Einstein in 1908 to be caused by accelerated mass, come in different signal shapes and frequencies depending on their source or origin. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a joint ESA/NASA mission to observe low frequency gravitational waves as produced by super massive black hole binaries. One important noise source in LISA will be on-board reference oscillators acting as a frequency standard for the science measurement. An inter-spacecraft clock tone transfer chain (consisting of frequency multipliers or dividers, high-frequency cables, electro-optic phase-modulators, optical fibers and fiber amplifiers) is necessary to remove this non-negligible phase noise in post processing.

I will show setups to detect excess phase noise introduced by these components and present recent experimental results of upper limits on their phase noise to a 2 GHz signal as well as some dependencies of phase shift over environmental influences.