Narrow Results

Recently, with an enlightening treatment, Baskaran and Grishchuk have shown the presence and importance of the so-called "magnetic" components of gravitational waves (GW's), which have to be taken into account in the context of the total response functions of interferometers for GW's propagating from arbitrary directions. In this paper the analysis of the response functions for the magnetic components is generalized in its full frequency dependence, while in the work of Baskaran and Grishchuk the response functions were computed only in the approximation of wavelength much larger than the linear dimensions of the interferometer. It is also shown that the response functions to the magnetic components grow at high frequencies, differently from the values of the response functions to the well-known ordinary components that decrease at high frequencies. Thus the magnetic components could in principle become the dominant part of the signal at high frequencies. This is important for a potential detection of the signal at high frequencies and confirms that the magnetic contributions must be taken into account in the data analysis. More, the fact that the response functions of the magnetic components grow at high frequencies shows that, in principle, the frequency-range of Earth-based interferometers could extend to frequencies over 10000 Hz.

With an enlighting analysis, Baskaran and Grishchuk have recently shown the presence and importance of the so-called "magnetic" components of gravitational waves (GWs), which have to be taken into account in the context of the total response functions of interferometers for GWs propagating from arbitrary directions. In this paper, more detailed angular and frequency dependences of the response functions for the magnetic components are given in the approximation of wavelength much larger than the linear dimensions of the interferometer, with a specific application to the parameters of the LIGO and Virgo interferometers. The results of this paper agree with the work of Baskaran and Grishchuk, in which it has been shown that the identification of "electric" and "magnetic" contributions is unambiguous in the long-wavelength approximation. At the end of this paper, the angular and frequency dependences of the total response functions of the LIGO and Virgo interferometers are given. In the high-frequency regime, the division on "electric" and "magnetic" components becomes ambiguous, thus the full theory of gravitational waves has to be used. Our results are consistent with the ones of Baskaran and Grishchuk for this case.

It was recently suggested that the magnetic component of gravitational waves (GWs) is relevant in the evaluation of frequency response functions of gravitational interferometers. In this paper we extend the analysis to the magnetic component of the scalar mode of GWs which arises from scalar–tensor gravity theory. In the low frequency approximation, the response function of ground-based interferometers is calculated. The angular dependence of the electric and magnetic contributions on the response function is discussed. Finally, for an arbitrary frequency range, the proper distance between two test masses is calculated and its usefulness in the high frequency limit for space-based interferometers is briefly considered.