The TIGA technique for detecting gravitational waves with a spherical antenna

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive study of a spherical gravitational wave antenna with 6 transducers, demonstrating effective data analysis, error assessment, and a method to determine the direction of external forces, including gravitational waves.

Contribution

It introduces a new theoretical and experimental framework for analyzing spherical antennas with radial transducers, including a novel in situ measurement technique and a general algorithm for force direction determination.

Findings

Errors from small deviations are minimal compared to noise.

The in situ measurement technique effectively determines force directions.

Prototype testing confirms the practicality of the proposed methods.

Abstract

We report the results of a theoretical and experimental study of a spherical gravitational wave antenna. We show that it is possible to understand the data from a spherical antenna with 6 radial resonant transducers attached to the surface in the truncated icosahedral arrangement. We find that the errors associated with small deviations from the ideal case are small compared to other sources of error, such as a finite signal-to-noise ratio. An in situ measurement technique is developed along with a general algorithm that describes a procedure for determining the direction of an external force acting on the antenna, including the force from a gravitational wave, using a combination of the transducer responses. The practicality of these techniques was verified on a room-temperature prototype antenna.