Comparison of LISA and Atom Interferometry for Gravitational Wave
  Astronomy in Space
  One of the atom interferometer gravitational wave missions proposed by
Dimopoulos et al.1 in 2008 was called AGIS-Sat. 2. It had a suggested
gravitational wave sensitivity set by the atom state detection shot noise level
that started at 1 mHz, was comparable to LISA sensitivity from 1 to about 20
mHz, and had better sensitivity from 20 to 500 mHz. The separation between the
spacecraft was 1,000 km, with atom interferometers 200 m long and shades from
sunlight used at each end. A careful analysis of many error sources was
included, but requirements on the time-stability of both the laser wavefront
aberrations and the atom temperatures in the atom clouds were not investigated.
After including these considerations, the laser wavefront aberration stability
requirement to meet the quoted sensitivity level is about 1\times10-8
wavelengths, and is far tighter than for LISA. Also, the temperature
fluctuations between atom clouds have to be less than 1 pK. An alternate atom
interferometer GW mission in Earth orbit called AGIS-LEO with 30 km satellite
separation has been suggested recently. The reduction of wavefront aberration
noise by sending the laser beam through a high-finesse mode-scrubbing optical
cavity is discussed briefly, but the requirements on such a cavity are not
given. Unfortunately, such an Earth-orbiting mission seems to be considerably
more difficult to design than a non-geocentric mission and does not appear to
have comparably attractive scientific goals.
