Opportunities and limits of lunar gravitational-wave detection

TL;DR

This paper evaluates three lunar gravitational-wave detector concepts, analyzing their observational capabilities, technological challenges, and potential limitations based on detailed noise modeling, to guide future lunar GW detection efforts.

Contribution

It compares three lunar gravitational-wave detector concepts, providing detailed noise analysis and identifying technological challenges and limitations.

Findings

Different detector concepts vary in sensitivity and feasibility.

Technological challenges include noise reduction and instrument stability.

Some detector designs face significant show-stoppers due to current technological limits.

Abstract

A new era of lunar exploration has begun with participation of all major space agencies. This activity brings opportunities for revolutionary science experiments and observatories on the Moon. The idea of a lunar gravitational-wave detector was already proposed during the Apollo program. The key characteristic of the Moon is that it is seismically extremely quiet. It was also pointed out that the permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles provide ideal conditions for gravitational-wave detection. In recent years, three different detector concepts were proposed with varying levels of technological complexity and science potential. In this paper, we confront the three concepts in terms of their observational capabilities based on a first more detailed modeling of instrumental noise. We identify important technological challenges and potential show-stoppers.