Noise Models in the LISA Mission

TL;DR

This paper discusses the noise models and their shapes used in the LISA mission's control system, crucial for detecting gravitational waves in space-based interferometry.

Contribution

It provides a detailed description of the noise models and shapes specific to the LISA mission's drag-free and attitude control system.

Findings

Characterization of actuation, sensing, and environmental noise sources.

Analysis of noise impact on LISA's measurement sensitivity.

Framework for synthesizing noise models for space-based interferometers.

Abstract

This document briefly describes the noise models and shapes used for the synthesis of the Drag-Free and Attitude Control System in the LISA space mission. LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) is one of the next large-class missions from the European Space Agency (ESA), expected to be launched in 2034. The main goal of the mission is to detect the gravitational waves, which are undulatory perturbations of the space-time fabric, extremely important to collect experimental proofs for the General Relativity Theory. In the 90s, different international collaborations of institutes laid the foundations for the first ground-based interferometers (see, e.g., LIGO and Virgo). However, ground-based interferometers have a limited bandwidth due to the Earth's environmental noises and short arm-length of few kilometers. Therefore, they cannot observe gravitational waves belonging to the portion of the spectrum below 1 Hz. This issue can be overcome by means of space-based interferometers, that can have arm-lengths up to millions of kilometers and exploit a quieter environment than the Earth's surface. The LISA system is affected by actuation, sensing and environmental disturbances and noises. Among the actuation noises we have those given by the Micro Propulsion System (MPS), the Gravitational Reference Sensor (GRS) and the Optical Assembly (OA) motor. Among the sensing noises we consider the interferometer, the Differential Wavefront Sensor (DWS) and the GRS. The environmental disturbances are given by the solar radiation pressure, the test-mass stiffness and self-gravity, and the environmental noises acting directly on the test-mass.