A Michelson interferometer in the field of a plane gravitational wave

Abstract

We treat the problem of a Michelson interferometer in the field of a plane gravitational wave in the framework of general relativity. The arms of the interferometer are regarded as the world lines of the light beams, whose motion is determined by the Hamilton-Jacobi equation for a massless particle. In the case of a weak monochromatic wave we find that the formula for the delay of a light beam agrees with the result obtained by solving the linearized coupled Einstein-Maxwell equations. We also calculate this delay in the next (quadratic) approximation.