Speaker
Description
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be the first space-based gravitational-wave (GW) detector operating in the millihertz regime. To suppress the otherwise-dominant laser frequency noise and clock jitter, LISA relies on Time-Delay Interferometry (TDI) and clock-noise suppression algorithms applied in post-processing. While these techniques have been extensively studied through software simulations, experimental demonstrations using hardware capable of generating LISA-like signals remain limited. Here we present an electro-optical testbed designed to generate signals representative of those measured by the LISA science interferometer.
Central to the system are FPGA-based delay lines that introduce phase shifts corresponding to the inter-spacecraft light-travel times and enable injection of arbitrary gravitational-wave signals into the data streams. These delay lines are integrated with an optical front end consisting of three lasers with phase-modulated clock sidebands and a reference laser. The resulting data streams incorporate realistic delays, Doppler shifts, laser frequency noise, and clock noise representative of the LISA measurement environment. This platform will enable experimental validation of TDI and clock-noise suppression algorithms and the recovery of injected gravitational-wave signals in post-processing.