Experiment demonstration of tilt-to-length coupling suppression by beam-alignment-mechanism

Tilt-to-length (TTL) noise, caused by angular jitter and misalignment, is a major noise source in the inter-satellite interferometer for gravitational wave detection. However, the required level of axis alignment of the optical components is beyond the current state of the art. A set of optical parallel plates, called beam alignment mechanism (BAM), is proposed by LISA to compensate for the alignment error. In this paper, we show a prototype design of the BAM and demonstrate its performance in a ground-based optical system. We derive the BAM theoretical model, which agrees well with the numerical simulation. Experimental results reveal that the BAM can achieve lateral displacement compensation of the optical axis with a resolution of 1 µm across a range of about 0.5 mm. Furthermore, the TTL coefficient is reduced from about 0.3 mm rad−1 to about 5 µm rad−1, satisfying the preliminary requirements for LISA and TianQin. These findings confirm the efficacy of the BAM in suppressing TTL noise, offering a promising solution for space-based gravitational wave detection.