Analytical Modeling of Far-Field Wavefront Error with Beam-Waist and Lateral-Shift Effects in Spaceborne Laser Interferometry
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 and the normalized lateral spot-shift ratio , to account for realistic beam truncation and alignment conditions. Based on this model, we analyze the influence of on far-field WFE in addition to the conventional received-power trade-off, showing that decreasing 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 ). For the normalized lateral spot-shift ratio , a entrance-pupil displacement in a Taiji-like telescope corresponds to and produces a phase-angle coupling coefficient of about , close to the typical far-field TTL requirement , 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.
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