Gravitational Wave Induced Vibrations of Slender Structures in Space

TL;DR

This paper investigates how slender space structures respond to gravitational waves in the low-frequency range, using Cosserat rod theory to estimate their potential as gravitational wave detectors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of Cosserat rod theory to model and estimate the sensitivity of slender structures for gravitational wave detection in space.

Findings

Sensitivity estimates for gravitational wave detection between 10^{-4} and 1 Hz.

A theoretical framework for analyzing vibrations induced by gravitational tidal forces.

Use of stochastic force modeling to account for thermal noise.

Abstract

This paper explores the interaction of weak gravitational fields with slender elastic materials in space and estimates their sensitivities for the detection of gravitational waves with frequencies between $10^{-4}$ and 1 Hz. The dynamic behaviour of such slender structures is ideally suited to analysis by the simple theory of Cosserat rods. Such a description offers a clean conceptual separation of the vibrations induced by bending, shear, twist and extension and the response to gravitational tidal accelerations can be reliably estimated in terms of the constitutive properties of the structure. The sensitivity estimates are based on a truncation of the theory in the presence of thermally induced homogeneous Gaussian stochastic forces.