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Free keywords:
Astrophysics, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, astro-ph.IM,General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
LISA Pathfinder (LPF) was a technology pioneering mission designed to test
key technologies required for gravitational wave detection in space. In the low
frequency regime (milli-Hertz and below), where space-based gravitational wave
observatories will operate, temperature fluctuations play a crucial role since
they can couple into the interferometric measurement and the test masses'
free-fall accuracy in many ways. A dedicated temperature measurement subsystem,
with noise levels in 10$\,\mu$K$\,$Hz$^{-1/2}$ down to $1\,$mHz was part of the
diagnostics unit on board LPF. In this paper we report on the temperature
measurements throughout mission operations, characterize the thermal
environment, estimate transfer functions between different locations and report
temperature stability (and its time evolution) at frequencies as low as
10$\,\mu$Hz, where typically values around $1\,$K$\,$Hz$^{-1/2}$ were measured.
