Thermo-elastic induced phase noise in the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft

Published

January 25, 2015

Author(s)

Ferran Gibert, Miquel Nofrarias, Nico Karnesis, Lluis Gesa, Victor Martin, Ignacio Mateos, Alberto Lobo, Reinhold Flatscher, Domenico Gerardi, Johannes Burkhardt, Ruediger Gerndt, David I. Robertson, Henry Ward, Paul McNamara, Felipe Guzman, Martin Hewitson, Ingo Diepholz, Jens Reiche, Gerhard Heinzel, Karsten Danzmann

Abstract

During the on-station thermal test campaign of the LISA Pathfinder, the diagnostics subsystem was tested in nearly space conditions for the first time after integration in the satellite. The results showed the compliance of the temperature measurement system, obtaining temperature noise around 10^−4 K/rtHz in the frequency band 1-30 mHz. In addition, controlled injection of heat signals to the suspension struts anchoring the LISA Technology Package (LTP) core assembly to the satellite structure allowed us to experimentally estimate, for the first time, the phase noise contribution through thermo-elastic distortion of the LTP interferometer, the satelliteʼs main instrument. Such contribution was found to be at 10−12 m Hz−1 2 , a factor of 30 below the measured noise at the lower end of the measurement bandwidth ( 1 mHz ).

Citation

Classical and Quantum Gravity

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

interferometry, optical metrology, temperature, space science

Citation

Gibert, F. , Nofrarias, M. , Karnesis, N. , Gesa, L. , Martin, V. , Mateos, I. , Lobo, A. , Flatscher, R. , Gerardi, D. , Burkhardt, J. , Gerndt, R. , Robertson, D. , Ward, H. , McNamara, P. , Guzman, F. , Hewitson, M. , Diepholz, I. , Reiche, J. , Heinzel, G. and Danzmann, K. (2015), Thermo-elastic induced phase noise in the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft, Classical and Quantum Gravity (Accessed April 23, 2024)