English

Analytical Modeling of Far-Field Wavefront Error with Beam-Waist and Lateral-Shift Effects in Spaceborne Laser Interferometry

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2026-04-30 v1

Abstract

The coupling between far-field wavefront error (WFE) and laser pointing jitter is an important source of tilt-to-length (TTL) noise in spaceborne laser interferometric links. We extend the Nijboer--Zernike analytical model for far-field WFE of truncated Gaussian beams by incorporating two practical initial-condition parameters, the beam-waist-to-aperture ratio qq and the normalized lateral spot-shift ratio srs_r, to account for realistic beam truncation and alignment conditions. Based on this model, we analyze the influence of qq on far-field WFE in addition to the conventional received-power trade-off, showing that decreasing qq from 1 to 0.9 and from 0.9 to 0.8 reduces the mean far-field WFE by approximately 10\% and 14\%, respectively, in Monte Carlo simulations of random initial aberrations. We also derive the direct contribution of lateral spot shift and its coupling with transmitted WFE (constrained to λ/20\lambda/20). For the normalized lateral spot-shift ratio srs_r, a 2 μm2~\mu\mathrm{m} entrance-pupil displacement in a Taiji-like telescope corresponds to sr=0.001s_r=0.001 and produces a phase-angle coupling coefficient of about 0.0892 pm/nrad0.0892~\mathrm{pm/nrad}, close to the typical far-field TTL requirement 0.1 pm/nrad0.1~\mathrm{pm/nrad}, while the spot-shift--aberration coupling terms are much smaller and can be neglected in practical tolerance estimation. These results provide a theoretical basis for beam-parameter optimization and alignment tolerance design in future space-based gravitational-wave detection missions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.26371,
  title  = {Analytical Modeling of Far-Field Wavefront Error with Beam-Waist and Lateral-Shift Effects in Spaceborne Laser Interferometry},
  author = {Ya-Zheng Tao and Rui-Hong Gao and Guangzhou Xu and Yue-Liang Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.26371},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

19 pages, 9 figures