# Temperature stability in the sub-milliHertz band with LISA Pathfinder

## TL;DR

This paper reports on the temperature stability measurements of the LISA Pathfinder mission, focusing on low-frequency fluctuations relevant for space-based gravitational wave detection, and characterizes the thermal environment and transfer functions.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed characterization of temperature stability and transfer functions at sub-milliHertz frequencies in a space mission for gravitational wave detection.

## Key findings

- Temperature fluctuations as low as 10 μHz were measured.
- Typical temperature stability around 1 K/Hz^{1/2} at low frequencies.
- Thermal environment characterization aids future gravitational wave observatory design.

## Abstract

LISA Pathfinder (LPF) was a technology pioneering mission designed to test key technologies required for gravitational wave detection in space. In the low frequency regime (milli-Hertz and below), where space-based gravitational wave observatories will operate, temperature fluctuations play a crucial role since they can couple into the interferometric measurement and the test masses' free-fall accuracy in many ways. A dedicated temperature measurement subsystem, with noise levels in 10$\,\mu$K$\,$Hz$^{-1/2}$ down to $1\,$mHz was part of the diagnostics unit on board LPF. In this paper we report on the temperature measurements throughout mission operations, characterize the thermal environment, estimate transfer functions between different locations and report temperature stability (and its time evolution) at frequencies as low as 10$\,\mu$Hz, where typically values around $1\,$K$\,$Hz$^{-1/2}$ were measured.