Lunar Gravitational-Wave Antenna
Abstract
Monitoring of vibrational eigenmodes of an elastic body excited by gravitational waves was one of the first concepts proposed for the detection of gravitational waves. At laboratory scale, these experiments became known as resonant-bar detectors first developed by Joseph Weber in the 1960s. Due to the dimensions of these bars, the targeted signal frequencies were in the kHz range. Weber also pointed out that monitoring of vibrations of Earth or Moon could reveal gravitational waves in the mHz band. His Lunar Surface Gravimeter experiment deployed on the Moon by the Apollo 17 crew had a technical failure rendering the data useless. In this article, we revisit the idea and propose a Lunar Gravitational-Wave Antenna (LGWA). We find that LGWA could become an important partner observatory for joint observations with the space-borne, laser-interferometric detector LISA, and at the same time contribute an independent science case due to LGWA's unique features. Technical challenges need to be overcome for the deployment of the experiment, and development of inertial vibration sensor technology lays out a future path for this exciting detector concept.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2010.13726,
title = {Lunar Gravitational-Wave Antenna},
author = {Jan Harms and Filippo Ambrosino and Lorella Angelini and Valentina Braito and Marica Branchesi and Enzo Brocato and Enrico Cappellaro and Eugenio Coccia and Michael Coughlin and Roberto Della Ceca and Massimo Della Valle and Cesare Dionisio and Costanzo Federico and Michelangelo Formisano and Alessandro Frigeri and Aniello Grado and Luca Izzo and Augusto Marcelli and Andrea Maselli and Marco Olivieri and Claudio Pernechele and Andrea Possenti and Samuele Ronchini and Roberto Serafinelli and Paola Severgnini and Maila Agostini and Francesca Badaracco and Lorenzo Betti and Marta Maria Civitani and Christophe Collette and Stefano Covino and Simone Dall'Osso and Paolo D'Avanzo and Matteo Di Giovanni and Mauro Focardi and Carlo Giunchi and Joris van Heijningen and Nandita Khetan and Daniele Melini and Giuseppe Mitri and Conor Mow-Lowry and Luca Naponiello and Vladimiro Noce and Gor Oganesyan and Emanuele Pace and Ho Jung Paik and Alessandro Pajewski and Eliana Palazzi and Marco Pallavicini and Giovanni Pareschi and Ashish Sharma and Giorgio Spada and Ruggero Stanga and Gianpiero Tagliaferri},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.13726},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
29 pages, 17 figures