Lunar Gravitational-wave Antenna
Jan Harms, Filippo Ambrosino, Lorella Angelini, Valentina Braito, Marica Branchesi, Enzo Brocato, Enrico Cappellaro, Eugenio Coccia, Michael Coughlin, Roberto Della Ceca, Massimo Della Valle, Cesare Dionisio, Costanzo Federico, Michelangelo Formisano, Alessandro Frigeri, Aniello Grado, Luca Izzo, Augusto Marcelli, Andrea Maselli, Marco Olivieri, Claudio Pernechele, Andrea Possenti, Samuele Ronchini, Roberto Serafinelli, Paola Severgnini, Maila Agostini, Francesca Badaracco, Alessandro Bertolini, Lorenzo Betti, Marta Maria Civitani, Christophe Collette, Stefano Covino, Simone Dall’Osso, Paolo D’Avanzo, Riccardo DeSalvo, Matteo Di Giovanni, Mauro Focardi, Carlo Giunchi, Joris van Heijningen, Nandita Khetan, Daniele Melini, Giuseppe Mitri, Conor Mow-Lowry, Luca Naponiello, Vladimiro Noce, Gor Oganesyan, Emanuele Pace, Ho Jung Paik, Alessandro Pajewski, Eliana Palazzi, Marco Pallavicini, Giovanni Pareschi, Riccardo Pozzobon, Ashish Sharma, Giorgio Spada, Ruggero Stanga, Gianpiero Tagliaferri, Raffaele Votta
Abstract
Abstract Monitoring of vibrational eigenmodes of an elastic body excited by gravitational waves was one of the first concepts proposed for the detection of gravitational waves. At laboratory scale, these experiments became known as resonant bar detectors first developed by Joseph Weber in the 1960s. Due to the dimensions of these bars, the targeted signal frequencies were in the kHz range. Weber also pointed out that monitoring of vibrations of Earth or the Moon could reveal gravitational waves in the mHz band. His Lunar Surface Gravimeter experiment deployed on the Moon by the Apollo 17 crew had a technical failure, which greatly reduced the science scope of the experiment. In this article, we revisit the idea and propose a Lunar Gravitational-Wave Antenna (LGWA). We find that LGWA could become an important partner observatory for joint observations with the space-borne, laser-interferometric detector LISA and at the same time contribute an independent science case due to LGWA’s unique features. Technical challenges need to be overcome for the deployment of the experiment, and development of inertial vibration sensor technology lays out a future path for this exciting detector concept.