Design and experimental demonstration of a laser modulation system for future gravitational-wave detectors

Experimental Demonstration of Time-Delay Interferometry for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

We report on the first demonstration of time-delay interferometry (TDI) for LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. TDI was implemented in a laboratory experiment designed to mimic the noise couplings that will occur in LISA. TDI suppressed laser frequency noise by approximately 10^9 and clock phase noise by 6x10^4, recovering the intrinsic displacement noise floor of our laboratory test bed. This removal of laser frequency noise and clock phase noise in post-processing marks the first experimental validation of the LISA measurement scheme.

Arm-Locking with the GRACE Follow-On Laser Ranging Interferometer

Arm-locking is a technique for stabilizing the frequency of a laser in an inter-spacecraft interferometer by using the spacecraft separation as the frequency reference. A candidate technique for future space-based gravitational wave detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), arm-locking has been extensive studied in this context through analytic models, time-domain simulations, and hardware-in-the-loop laboratory demonstrations. In this paper we show the Laser Ranging Interferometer instrument flying aboard the upcoming Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (G…

Demonstration of polarization sensitivity of emulsion-based pair conversion telescope for cosmic gamma-ray polarimetry

Linear polarization of high-energy gamma-rays (10 MeV-100 GeV) can be detected by measuring the azimuthal angle of electron-positron pairs and observing the modulation of the azimuthal distribution. To demonstrate the gamma-ray polarization sensitivity of emulsion, we conducted a test using a polarized gamma-ray beam at SPring-8/LEPS. Emulsion tracks were reconstructed using scanning data, and gamma-ray events were selected automatically. Using an optical microscope, out of the 2381 gamma-ray conversions that were observed, 1372 remained after event selection, on the azimuthal angle distributi…

Demonstration of a Near-IR Laser Comb for Precision Radial Velocity Measurements in Astronomy

We describe a successful effort to produce a laser comb around 1.55 $μ$m in the astronomical H band using a method based on a line-referenced, electro-optical-modulation frequency comb. We discuss the experimental setup, laboratory results, and proof of concept demonstrations at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) and the Keck-II telescope. The laser comb has a demonstrated stability of $<$ 200 kHz, corresponding to a Doppler precision of ~0.3 m/s. This technology, when coupled with a high spectral resolution spectrograph, offers the promise of $<$1 m/s radial velocity precision suitab…

LISA的臂-腔联合锁定系统实验演示

Experimental demonstration of the combined arm- and cavity-locking system for LISA

本文针对 LISA 任务，实验验证了一种结合干涉臂与光学腔参考的混合激光锁定技术，结果表明该系统无需更改硬件即可有效抑制腔波动并降低 Doppler 牵引。

Demonstration of On-Sky Calibration of Astronomical Spectra using a 25 GHz near-IR Laser Frequency Comb

We describe and characterize a 25 GHz laser frequency comb based on a cavity-filtered erbium fiber mode-locked laser. The comb provides a uniform array of optical frequencies spanning 1450 nm to 1700 nm, and is stabilized by use of a global positioning system referenced atomic clock. This comb was deployed at the 9.2 m Hobby-Eberly telescope at the McDonald Observatory where it was used as a radial velocity calibration source for the fiber-fed Pathfinder near-infrared spectrograph. Stellar targets were observed in three echelle orders over four nights, and radial velocity precision of \sim10 m…