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Gravitational-Wave Detector Noise Budget

Interactive Michelson-interferometer noise budget: tune laser power, mirror mass and seismic isolation to see how shot noise, radiation-pressure (quantum back-action) noise, thermal noise and seismic noise combine into a LIGO-style strain sensitivity curve, and where the Standard Quantum Limit sits.

Space & Astronomy3DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 2D version

Real gravitational-wave observatories like LIGO don't have one "sensitivity" number — they have a noise budget: several independent physical processes, each with its own frequency shape, added in quadrature into a single strain sensitivity curve. This simulator renders a simplified 3D Michelson interferometer (laser, beamsplitter, two arm cavities with jittering end mirrors) alongside a live log-log strain amplitude spectral density plot. Adjusting laser power and mirror mass trades shot noise against radiation-pressure back-action noise exactly as it does in a real detector, tracing out the Standard Quantum Limit; adjusting seismic isolation moves the low-frequency wall; and a reference binary-neutron-star inspiral track overlays the curve so you can see — and roughly quantify via an integrated SNR estimate — which frequency band actually carries detectable signal.

⚙ Under the hood

Tune laser power, mirror mass and seismic isolation on a 3D Michelson interferometer to see how shot noise, radiation-pressure back-action, thermal noise and seismic noise combine into a LIGO-style strain sensitivity curve, and where the Standard Quantum Limit sits.

gravitational wavesLIGOinterferometerquantum noiseastrophysicsdetector physics

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install