From laboratory experiments to LISA Pathfinder: achieving LISA geodesic motion

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the LISA Pathfinder mission's ability to measure differential acceleration noise, demonstrating it can verify LISA's performance requirements through extensive ground testing and simulations.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative assessment of LISA Pathfinder's performance, linking ground tests and simulations to expected in-flight results.

Findings

LISA Pathfinder can verify acceleration noise within a factor of two at 1 mHz.

The mission can verify noise within a factor of six at 0.1 mHz.

Key disturbance models support LISA's performance guarantees.

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative assessment of the performance of the upcoming LISA Pathfinder geodesic explorer mission. The findings are based on the results of extensive ground testing and simulation campaigns using flight hardware and flight control and operations algorithms. The results show that, for the central experiment of measuring the stray differential acceleration between the LISA test masses, LISA Pathfinder will be able to verify the overall acceleration noise to within a factor two of the LISA requirement at 1 mHz and within a factor 6 at 0.1 mHz. We also discuss the key elements of the physical model of disturbances, coming from LISA Pathfinder and ground measurement, that will guarantee the LISA performance.