English

Perfect porcupines: ideal networks for low frequency gravitational wave astronomy

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2010-04-13 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

Perfect porcupines are specially-configured networks of gravitational wave detectors, in the limit that the individual detectors and the distances between them are short relative to the gravitational wavelengths of interest. They have beautiful properties which make them ideal gravitational wave telescopes. I present the most important cases explicitly. For a network of one-arm detectors (like "AGIS" \cite{Dimopoulos_et_al}), the minimal perfect porcupine has 6 detectors, oriented along the 6 diameters of a regular icosahedron. For a network of two-arm detectors (like the equal-arm Michelson interferometers LIGO/VIRGO) the minimal perfect porcupine is a certain 5 detector configuration.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1003.4946,
  title  = {Perfect porcupines: ideal networks for low frequency gravitational wave astronomy},
  author = {Latham Boyle},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.4946},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

4 pages; minor change: improved explanation of counting (in and around Eq. 7)