The Design Strain Sensitivity of the Schenberg Spherical Resonant Antenna for Gravitational Waves

Understand

The main purpose of this study is to review the Schenberg resonant antenna transfer function and to recalculate the antenna design strain sensitivity for gravitational waves.

• We consider the spherical antenna with six transducers in the semi dodecahedral configuration.
• When coupled to the antenna, the transducer-sphere system will work as a mass-spring system with three masses.
• The first one is the antenna effective mass for each quadrupole mode, the second one is the mass of the mechanical structure of the transducer first mechanical mode and the third one is the effective mass of the transducer membrane that makes one of the transducer microwave cavity walls.