Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 1996
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996aps..may..g503p&link_type=abstract
American Physical Society, APS/AAPT Joint Meeting, May 2-5, 1996, abstract #G5.03
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The sensitivity of resonant-mass gravitational-wave antennas has now reached h <= 10-18, where h is the dimensionless metric perturbation caused by the wave. In order to observe gravitational wave events such as coalescing neutron star binaries and colliding black holes from as far as the Virgo cluster of galaxies, the detector sensitivity must be improved by three orders of magnitude. With such an aim, construction of massive ( ~ 40 ton) spherical antennas have been proposed by a number of groups world wide. The standard quantum limit of the sensitivity of such detectors will be h \cong 10-21. Unlike a cylinder, a sphere has five degenerate fundamental quadrupole modes which interact with an incoming gravitational wave. By combining the responses of all these modes, one can determine the direction of the source and the polarization of the wave with a single spherical antenna. Summed over the modes, the sphere has a direction-independent cross section, as expected from its symmetry, permitting full sky coverage with a single antenna. These unique properties, combined with its enhanced sensitivity due to its multi-mode nature and increased mass, make spherical detectors of gravitational waves ideal new instruments for observational astronomy. Significant advancement has been made recently on instrumentation of the spherical antenna. Mounting six identical resonant transducers on the six pentagonal faces in one hemisphere of a truncated icosahedral gravitational-wave antenna (TIGA)(W. W. Johnson and S. M. Merkowitz, Phys. Rev. Lett. \underline70), 2367 (1993). has been found to maintain the ``spherical'' symmetry in the coupled antenna-transducer system. The quadrupole modes of the sphere split into doublets with equal frequency splitting, as desired. Numerical calculations have shown that gravitational-wave signals from coalescing neutron star binaries and dynamic instabilities of rapidly rotating stars in the Virgo cluster can be resolved with a spherical antenna with a near-quantum-limited sensitivity. ^*Supported by the National Science Foundation under grant PHY93-12220. \vspace-0.7em
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