The role of the quantum properties of gravitational radiation in the dete ction of gravitational waves

TL;DR

This paper explores how the quantum properties of gravitational waves might influence their detection, suggesting that quantum effects could cause measurable dispersion in detection outputs depending on experimental parameters.

Contribution

It analyzes the impact of quantum properties of gravitational waves on detection methods and proposes that quantum effects could induce dispersion in measurement results, influenced by experimental setup.

Findings

Current detectors are far from quantum threshold, making backreaction negligible.

Quantum properties could cause dispersion in measurement outputs.

Existing proposals may exhibit large dispersion due to quantum effects.

Abstract

The role that the quantum properties of a gravitational wave could play in the detection of gravitational radiation is analyzed. It is not only corroborated that in the current laser-interferometric detectors the resolution of the experimental apparatus could lie very far from the corresponding quantum threshold (thus the backreaction effect of the measuring device upon the gravitational wave is negligible), but it is also suggested that the consideration of the quantum properties of the wave could entail the definition of dispersion of the measurement outputs. This dispersion would be a function not only of the sensitivity of the measuring device, but also of the interaction time (between measuring device and gravitational radiation) and of the arm length of the corresponding laser- interferometer. It would have a minimum limit, and the introduction of the current experimental parameters insinuates that the dispersion of the existing proposals could lie very far from this minimum, which means that they would show a very large dispersion.