Gravitational wave detection with single-laser atom interferometers

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel broad-band gravitational wave detector using two atom interferometers with a single laser, leveraging atomic coherence for enhanced stability and applying time-delay interferometry to improve detection sensitivity.

Contribution

It introduces a new design for gravitational wave detection that uses one laser and atom interferometers as stable clocks, enabling effective noise cancellation.

Findings

Conceptual design of a single-laser atom interferometer gravitational wave detector.

Potential for improved stability and noise reduction in gravitational wave detection.

Promising initial assessment of the approach's feasibility.

Abstract

We present a new general design approach of a broad-band detector of gravitational radiation that relies on two atom interferometers separated by a distance L. In this scheme, only one arm and one laser will be used for operating the two atom interferometers. We consider atoms in the atom interferometers not only as perfect inertial reference sensors, but also as highly stable clocks. Atomic coherence is intrinsically stable and can be many orders of magnitude more stable than a laser. The unique one-laser configuration allows us to then apply time-delay interferometry to the responses of the two atom interferometers, thereby canceling the laser phase fluctuations while preserving the gravitational wave signal in the resulting data set. Our approach appears very promising. We plan to investigate further its practicality and detailed sensitivity analysis.