Lorentz Force Detuning in Heterodyne Gravitational Wave Experiments

Abstract

Heterodyne cavity experiments for gravitational wave (GW) detection experience a rising interest since recent studies showed that they allow to probe the ultra high frequency regime above $10\,\text{kHz}$. In this paper, we present a concise theoretical study of the experiment based on ideas from the former MAGO collaboration which already started experiments in turn of the millenium. It extends the former results via deriving an additional term originating from a back-action of the electromagnetic field on the cavity walls, also known as Lorentz Force Detuning. We argue that this term leads to a complex dependence of the signal power $P_{\text{sig}}$ on the coupling coefficient between the mechanical shell modes and the electromagnetic eigenmodes of the cavity. It turns out that one has to adapt the coupling over the whole parameter space since the optimal value depends on the mechanical mode $\omega_l$ and the GW frequency $\omega_g$. This result is particularly relevant for the design of future experiments.