LISA3 Paper on Spherical Proof Masses

The PDF papers on this page may be downloaded directly from this website with the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Managing Spherical Proof Masses in Drag-Free Satellites with Application to the LISA Mission

This paper on Spherical Proof Masses (PDF) was given at the LISA3 conference in July 2000. For high accuracy, it is better if a spherical proof mass spins about a defined axis. The paper discusses the techniques for doing this.

This paper has now appeared in Classical and Quantum Gravity, 18 No 19 (7 October 2001), pp 4153-4158.

There are a number of reasons for using a full three-axis Drag-Free satellite for the LISA mission which are discussed in the paper as well as in the page Spherical Versus Cubical Proof Masses for LISA on this website.

The Golm Meeting at the Max-Planck Institut für Gravitationsphysik

The third LISA Symposium was held in Golm Germany from July 11-14, 2000. A full report of the LISA design can be obtained from The LISA STS Report (10 MB PDF).

The papers presented at LISA 3 have now been published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, Volume 18, Number 19, 7 October 2001.

The Max-Planck Institut für Gravitationsphysik (Albert Einstein Institut) is one of the new Max-Planck institutes founded in the former East Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall. It is divided into three parts: General Relativity, Astrophysical Relativity, and Quantum Gravity and Unified Theories. The LISA3 conference was held at the Astrophysical Relativity division directed by B. F. Schutz which does mostly numerical solutions of Einstein's field equations. Numerical solutions of close interactions of dense gravitational objects are necessary for designing the matched filters necessary to retrieve the very weak gravitational-wave signals from the background noise.

The Institute is located in Golm which is a few kilometers west of Potsdam which in turn is a few kilometers to the southwest of Berlin. It is easily reachable by taking the train (not the S-Bahn) to Potsdam from the downtown Berlin train station, Bahnhof Zoo, and then transferring to the train for Golm which arrives a few minutes later on the same track.