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Sub-Femto-g Free Fall for Space-Based Gravitational Wave Observatories: LISA Pathfinder Results

Mendes, L.; Madden, S.; Russano, G. +116 more

We report the first results of the LISA Pathfinder in-flight experiment. The results demonstrate that two free-falling reference test masses, such as those needed for a space-based gravitational wave observatory like LISA, can be put in free fall with a relative acceleration noise with a square root of the power spectral density of 5.2 ±0.1 fm s

Experimental bounds on collapse models from gravitational wave detectors

Carlesso, Matteo; Bassi, Angelo; Falferi, Paolo +1 more

Wave function collapse models postulate a fundamental breakdown of the quantum superposition principle at the macroscale. Therefore, experimental tests of collapse models are also fundamental tests of quantum mechanics. Here, we compute the upper bounds on the collapse parameters, which can be inferred by the gravitational wave detectors LIGO, LIS…

Constraints on LISA Pathfinder’s self-gravity: design requirements, estimates and testing procedures

Mendes, L.; Madden, S.; Russano, G. +96 more

LISA Pathfinder satellite was launched on 3 December 2015 toward the Sun-Earth first Lagrangian point (L1) where the LISA Technology Package (LTP), which is the main science payload, will be tested. LTP achieves measurements of differential acceleration of free-falling test masses (TMs) with sensitivity below 3× {10}^-14 {{m}} {{{s}}}