Neutron displacement noise-free interferometer for gravitational-wave detection

Abstract

An interferometer design that cancels all displacement noises of its test masses and maintains a gravitational-wave (GW) signal by combining multiple detector signals is called a displacement noise-free interferometer (DFI). The idea has been considered previously for a laser interferometer. However, a limitation of a laser DFI is that its sensitive frequency band is too high for astrophysical GW sources, ∼10⁵ Hz even for a kilometer-sized interferometer. To circumvent this limitation, in this paper, we propose a neutron DFI, in which neutrons are used instead of light. Since neutrons have velocities much lower than the speed of light, the sensitive frequency band of a neutron DFI can be lowered down to ∼10⁻¹ Hz. Therefore, a neutron DFI can be utilized for detecting GWs that are inaccessible by an ordinary laser interferometer on the ground.

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