Cited by 396Pulsars and Gravitational Waves ResearchAdvanced Frequency and Time StandardsGeophysics and Sensor Technology

Gravitational wave detection with optical lattice atomic clocks

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Kolkowitz, S., Pikovski, I., Langellier, N., Lukin, M. D., Walsworth, R. L., Ye, J.·2016·Physical Review D

Abstract

We propose a space-based gravitational wave (GW) detector consisting of two spatially separated, drag-free satellites sharing ultrastable optical laser light over a single baseline. Each satellite contains an optical lattice atomic clock, which serves as a sensitive, narrowband detector of the local frequency of the shared laser light. A synchronized two-clock comparison between the satellites will be sensitive to the effective Doppler shifts induced by incident GWs at a level competitive with other proposed space-based GW detectors, while providing complementary features. The detected signal is a differential frequency shift of the shared laser light due to the relative velocity of the satellites, and the detection window can be tuned through the control sequence applied to the atoms' internal states. This scheme enables the detection of GWs from continuous, spectrally narrow sources, such as compact binary inspirals, with frequencies ranging from $\ensuremath{\sim}3\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{mHz}--10\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{Hz}$ without loss of sensitivity, thereby bridging the detection gap between space-based and terrestrial optical interferometric GW detectors. Our proposed GW detector employs just two satellites, is compatible with integration with an optical interferometric detector, and requires only realistic improvements to existing ground-based clock and laser technologies.

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  • These optical clocks can be used to explore geophysical phenomena, detect gravitational waves, test general relativity and search for dark matter.

    “These optical clocks can further be used to explore geophysical phenomena 10 , detect gravitational waves 11 , test general relativity 12 and search for dark matter 13-17 .”

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  1. B. Bertotti, R. Ambrosini, J. Armstrong, S. Asmar, G. Comoretto, G. Giampieri, L. Iess, Y. Koyama, A. Messeri, A. Vecchio et al., Search for gravitational wave trains with the spacecraft ULYSSES, Astron. Astrophys. 296, 13 (1995).
  2. K. Danzmann, T. Prince, P. Binetruy, P. Bender, S. Buchman, J. Centrella, M. Cerdonio, N. Cornish, A. Cruise, C. Cutler et al., LISA: Unveiling a hidden universe, Assessment Study Report ESA/SRE 3, 2 (2011).
  3. A. Arvanitaki, P. W. Graham, J. M. Hogan, S. Rajendran, and K. Van Tilburg, Search for light scalar dark matter with atomic gravitational wave detectors, arXiv:1606.04541. · arXiv
  4. S. Origlia, S. Schiller, M. Pramod, L. Smith, Y. Singh, W. He, S. Viswam, D. Świerad, J. Hughes, K. Bongs et al., Development of a strontium optical lattice clock for the SOC mission on the ISS, in Proceedings of SPIE 9900, Quantum Optics (SPIE, Brussels, Belgium, 2016), p. 990003.
  5. M. Schioppo, R. Brown, W. McGrew, N. Hinkley, R. Fasano, K. Beloy, T. Yoon, G. Milani, D. Nicolodi, J. Sherman et al., Ultra-stable optical clock with two cold-atom ensembles, arXiv:1607.06867. · arXiv
  6. J. Rutman, Characterization of phase and frequency insta- bilities in precision frequency sources: Fifteen years of progress, Proc. IEEE 66, 1048 (1978).
  7. M. Maggiore, Gravitational Waves (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008).

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Authors
Kolkowitz, S., Pikovski, I., Langellier, N., Lukin, M. D., Walsworth, R. L., & Ye, J.
Affiliations
  • Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (US)
  • Harvard University (US)
Venue
Physical Review D
Published
2016-12-27
Volume
94
Issue
12
ISSN
  • 2470-0010 (ISSN-L)
  • 2470-0029
OpenAlex
W2412940489
Cited by
396
References
63
Citations by year
2026: 36 · 2025: 54 · 2024: 48 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 46 · 2021: 32 · 2020: 40 · 2019: 36 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 2
FWCI
14.21
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Physical review. D/Physical review. D. (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Funders
  • National Institute of Standards and Technology
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • JILA Physics Frontier Center, University of Colorado
  • National Science Foundation
  • Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
  • Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, Harvard University
  • Center for Ultracold Atoms
  • National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship
  • National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine National Research Council
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Advanced Frequency and Time Standards
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Ocean Engineering › Geophysics and Sensor Technology
Keywords
gravitational wave detection, space-based gravitational wave detectors, Doppler shift, drag-free satellite, laser frequency stabilization, compact binary inspirals, low-frequency gravitational waves

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