Spurious Solar-Wind Effects on Acceleration Noise in LISA Pathfinder

TL;DR

This study analyzes solar-wind effects on LISA Pathfinder's acceleration noise using data from ACE, finding that solar-wind has negligible impact on the measurements within the main observing band, thus not a significant noise source.

Contribution

The paper provides the first comparative analysis of solar-wind effects on LISA Pathfinder using real data, demonstrating minimal impact on acceleration noise.

Findings

Solar-wind effects are negligible in the main observing band.

High-frequency coherence is due to random chance, not solar-wind.

Solar irradiance pressure may be a more significant noise source.

Abstract

Spurious solar-wind effects are a potential noise source in the measurements of the future Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Comparative models are used to predict the possible impact of this noise factor and estimate spurious solar-wind effects on acceleration noise in LISA Pathfinder (LPF). Data from NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE), situated at the L1 Lagrange point, served as a reliable source of solar-wind data. The data sets were compared over the 114-day time period from March 1, 2016 to June 23, 2016. To evaluate these effects, the data from both satellites were formatted, gap-filled, and adapted for comparison, and a coherence plot comparing the results of the Fast Fourier Transformations. The coherence plot suggested that solar-wind had a minuscule effect on the LPF, and higher frequency coherence (LISA's main observing band) can be attributed to random chance correlation. This result indicates that measurable correlation due to solar-wind noise over 3-month timescales can be ruled out as a noise source. This is encouraging, although another source of noise from the sun, solar irradiance pressure, is estimated to have a more significant effect and has yet to be analyzed.