https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2590-8
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Newtonian noise limit in atom interferometers for gravitational wave detection
1
Dipartimento di Scienze di Base e Fondamenti—DiSBeF, Università degli Studi di Urbino “Carlo Bo”, 61029, Urbino, Italy
2
INFN, Sezione di Firenze, INFN, 50019, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
* e-mail: flavio.vetrano@uniurb.it
Received:
10
June
2013
Revised:
17
September
2013
Published online:
9
October
2013
In this work we study the influence of the Newtonian noise on atom interferometers applied to the detection of gravitational waves, and we compute the resulting limits to the sensitivity in two different configurations: a single atom interferometer, or a pair of atom interferometers operated in a differential configuration. We find that for the instrumental configurations considered, and operating in the frequency range [0.1–10] Hz, the limits would be comparable to those affecting large scale optical interferometers.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg and Società Italiana di Fisica, 2013