The Gravitational Wave Observatory Designer: Sensitivity Limits of Spaceborne Detectors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a web-based tool for designing spaceborne gravitational wave detectors, allowing optimization of parameters to achieve sensitivity limited by shot noise, and compares the design's sensitivity to astrophysical sources.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive web application that models and optimizes spaceborne gravitational wave observatory parameters considering various noise sources.

Findings

The tool effectively explores parameter space for detector design.

It identifies configurations where shot noise dominates over other disturbances.

Sensitivity estimates are comparable to expected astrophysical signals.

Abstract

The most promising concept for low frequency gravitational wave observatories are laser interferometric detectors in space. It is usually assumed that the noise floor for such a detector is dominated by optical shot noise in the signal readout. For this to be true, a careful balance of mission parameters is crucial to keep all other parasitic disturbances below shot noise. We developed a web application that uses over 30 input parameters and considers many important technical noise sources and noise suppression techniques. It optimizes free parameters automatically and generates a detailed report on all individual noise contributions. Thus you can easily explore the entire parameter space and design a realistic gravitational wave observatory. In this document we describe the different parameters, present all underlying calculations, and compare the final observatory's sensitivity with astrophysical sources of gravitational waves. We use as an example parameters currently assumed to be likely applied to a space mission to be launched in 2034 by the European Space Agency. The web application itself is publicly available on the Internet at http://spacegravity.org/designer.