A protocol of potential advantage in the low frequency range to gravitational wave detection with space based optical atomic clocks

Abstract

A recent proposal describes space based gravitational wave (GW) detection with optical lattice atomic clocks [Kolkowitz et. al., Phys. Rev. D 94, 124043 (2016)] [1]. Based on their setup, we propose a new measurement method for gravitational wave detection in low frequency with optical lattice atomic clocks. In our method, n successive Doppler signals are collected and the summation for all these signals is made to improve the sensitivity of the low-frequency GW detection. In particular, the improvement is adjustable by the number of Doppler signals, which is equivalent to that the length between two atomic clocks is increased. Thus, the same sensitivity can be reached but with shorter distance, even though the acceleration noises lead to failing to achieve the anticipated improvement below the inflection point of frequency which is determined by the quantum projection noise. Our result is timely for the ongoing development of space-born observatories aimed at studying physical and astrophysical effects associated with low-frequency GW.