4 ms·

Could they, connecting another clock, act as a "large-scale" LIGO ? Or is the precision not enough ?

• simcop2387 10y ago
  No, LIGO works on a different principle. It bounces a single beam between mirrors at great distance and them measures the interference pattern that results from the phase differences because the light traveled a different distance in each direction.
  • mtmail 10y ago
    further reading 'The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO
• analog31 10y ago
  I suppose they could connect the two clocks via fibers following different paths, to create a large interferometer. For that matter, it might be possible to cover a very large area with a bunch of clocks interconnected by a "web" of fibers. But fibers do have problems. Their optical path length depends on temperature, and on how much the fiber is stretched. Understanding those issues is probably good for a dissertation or two. ;-)
  • UweSchmidt 10y ago
    Just a wild guess - the path length due to temperature and wear should grow and shrink at a slow rate, no? The gravitational wave however should be a spike, affecting the lag that could be potentially be measured. The LIGO-lasers are probably much more precise, but we have way more fiber and clocks than LIGO observatories. Thoughts?
    • analog31 10y ago
      Thinking about it more, it was mentioned that the laser clocks might have a fair amount of phase noise, and might not be good for picking up fast time lag signals. On the other hand, you can feed multiple lasers down the same fiber, so a better experiment might be to wait for the fiber network to be built, and use a separate laser color from a specialized laser with excellent short term stability.