Related papers: Progress towards an electro-optical simulator for …

Satellite geodesy uses the measurement of the motion of one or more satellites to infer precise information about the Earth's gravitational field. In this work, we consider the achievable precision limits on such measurements by examining…

The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is a space-based long-baseline optical interferometer for precision astrometry. One of the primary objectives of the SIM instrument is to accurately determine the directions to a grid of stars,…

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a planned space-based observatory designed to detect gravitational waves (GWs) within the millihertz frequency range. LISA is anticipated to observe the inspiral of compact objects into black…

Measurement of stray light in a complex optical system can be a complex task. We developed a method to measure coherent stray light inside an assembled device, determining all stray light sources and their relative contribution. The method…

A long-held vision has been to realize diffraction-limited optical aperture synthesis over kilometer baselines. This will enable imaging of stellar surfaces and their environments, and reveal interacting gas flows in binary systems. An…

Laser frequency stabilization is notably one of the major challenges on the way to a space-borne gravitational wave observatory. The proposed Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is presently under development in an ESA, NASA…

Dark wavefront sensing takes shape following quantum mechanics concepts in which one is able to "see" an object in one path of a two-arm interferometer using an as low as desired amount of light actually "hitting" the occulting object. A…

Arm-locking is a technique for stabilizing the frequency of a laser in an inter-spacecraft interferometer by using the spacecraft separation as the frequency reference. A candidate technique for future space-based gravitational wave…

Previous work demonstrated effective laser frequency noise (LFN) suppression for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) data from raw phasemeter measurements using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm with fractional delay…

Accurate simulation of pulsar flux variability is critical for testing Square Kilometre Array (SKA) interferometric pipelines. However, most existing simulators neglect the effects of integration time and related observational parameters,…

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission aims to detect gravitational waves by interferometrically measuring the change of separation between free-falling test masses (TMs). LISA's interferometers must deliver pm/rtHz…

We report here the characterization (temperature coefficients and noise level) of selected voltage references in the frequency range from 10^(-5) to 10 Hz. The goal of this work is to update previous studies, with a characterization at…

Space-based gravitational wave (GW) observatories, such as the future Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), employ synthetic Time Delay Interferometry (TDI) to cancel the otherwise overwhelming laser frequency noise. The phase readouts…

Extraterrestrial communication signals are hypothesized to be present in an extensive search space. Using principles of communication theory and system design, methods are studied and implemented to reduce the signal search space, while…

Studying the rapid variability of many astronomical objects is key to understanding the underlying processes at play. However, a combination of limited telescope availability, viewing constraints, and the unpredictable nature of many…

This paper presents a quantitative assessment of the performance of the upcoming LISA Pathfinder geodesic explorer mission. The findings are based on the results of extensive ground testing and simulation campaigns using flight hardware and…

Estimation of time delays from a noisy and gapped data is one of the simplest data analysis problems in astronomy by its formulation. But as history of real experiments show, the work with observed data sets can be quite complex and…

The space-based Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be able to observe the gravitational-wave signals from systems comprised of a massive black hole and a stellar-mass compact object. These systems are known as extreme-mass-ratio…

Stellar intensity interferometers correlate photons within their coherence time and could overcome the baseline limitations of existing amplitude interferometers. Intensity interferometers do not rely on phase coherence of the optical…

LISA is a joint space mission of the NASA and the ESA for detecting low frequency gravitational waves in the band $10^{-5} - 1$ Hz. In order to attain the requisite sensitivity for LISA, the laser frequency noise must be suppressed below…