Eur. Phys. J. C (2013) 73: 2590
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

Abstract

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.