Validation of optical pathlength stability in a LISA test-bench demonstrator
Abstract
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) observatory is a future L3 mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) to detect gravitational waves, set to launch in 2035. The detector constellation will conduct interferometry to picometer stability over an unprecedented arm length of 2.5 million km. In this paper, we present the development and testing results for the Zerodur interferometer (ZIFO), an optical demonstrator built to validate critical technology for the test setup of the interferometric core of LISA. Optical path length stability measurements on the ZIFO demonstrate successful reduction of bench noise to maintain the 10 pm/ specification across the 1 mHz to 1 Hz frequency band. We also identify and characterize dominant noise sources from phasemeters and correlations of beam tilt into the path length that were observed during the test campaign.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.16749,
title = {Validation of optical pathlength stability in a LISA test-bench demonstrator},
author = {Shivani Harer and Maxime Vincent and Hubert Halloin and Ouali Acef and Nisrine Arab and Romain Arguel and Axel Arhancet and Damien Bachet and Nathalie Besson and Sébastien Bize and Aurélien Boutin and Sara Bruhier and Christelle Buy and Michael Carle and Jean-Pierre Coulon and Nicoleta Dinu-Jaeger and Mathieu Dupont and Christophe Fabron and R'emi Granelli and David Holleville and Dominique Huet and Pascal Huguet Chantôme and Eric Kajfasz and Mickael Lacroix and Matthieu Laporte and Rodolphe Le Targat and Jean Lesrel and Michel Lintz and Michel Lours and Christophe Meessen and Mourad Merzougui and Alexis Mehlman and Marco Nardello and Laure Oudda and Benjamin Pointard and Pierre Prat and Emmanuelle Rivière and Jérôme Royon and Aurélia Secroun and Samuel Sube and Johannes Veyron and Thomas Zerguerras and Julien Zoubian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.16749},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
28 pages, 12 figures