Terrestrial Gravitational Wave Detection with Atom Interferometers
Abstract
Atom interferometers (AIFs) are highly precise inertial sensors and are considered promising instruments for the detection of gravitational waves (GWs) and certain dark matter (DM) candidates in the mid-frequency band. While GW detection with AIFs was initially proposed for space-based experiments with baselines spanning thousands of kilometers, recent developments suggest that terrestrial setups with baselines of at least 100 meters may also be capable of detecting GWs. In this work, we analytically derive the GW phase response formula of a ground detector, find an additional term compared to the existing literature and check it our findings numerically. Based on this treatment, we analyze the optimal geometric parameters for earth-bound AIF experiments. Subsequently, we numerically simulate GW detection schemes for these optimized interferometers using an open-source Python algorithm. Numerical simulations of these schemes have are not available to the community, yet crucial for the accurate modeling of noise and non-trivial gravitational backgrounds.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{werner2026terrestrial,
title = {{Terrestrial Gravitational Wave Detection with Atom Interferometers}},
author = {Michael Werner and Ashkan Alibabaei and Naceur Gaaloul},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.01227},
eprint = {2609.01227},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01227},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Terrestrial Gravitational Wave Detection with Atom Interferometers
AU - Michael Werner
AU - Ashkan Alibabaei
AU - Naceur Gaaloul
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.01227
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01227
AB - Atom interferometers (AIFs) are highly precise inertial sensors and are considered promising instruments for the detection of gravitational waves (GWs) and certain dark matter (DM) candidates in the mid-frequency band. While GW detection with AIFs was initially proposed for space-based experiments with baselines spanning thousands of kilometers, recent developments suggest that terrestrial setups with baselines of at least 100 meters may also be capable of detecting GWs. In this work, we analytically derive the GW phase response formula of a ground detector, find an additional term compared to the existing literature and check it our findings numerically. Based on this treatment, we analyze the optimal geometric parameters for earth-bound AIF experiments. Subsequently, we numerically simulate GW detection schemes for these optimized interferometers using an open-source Python algorithm. Numerical simulations of these schemes have are not available to the community, yet crucial for the accurate modeling of noise and non-trivial gravitational backgrounds.
ER -