Measuring tidal effects with the Einstein Telescope: A design study

Abstract

Over the last few years, there has been a large momentum to ensure that the third-generation era of gravitational wave detectors will find its realisation in the next decades, and numerous design studies have been ongoing for some time. Some of the main factors determining the cost of the Einstein Telescope lie in the length of the interferometer arms and its shape; L-shaped detectors versus a single triangular configuration. Both designs are further expected to include a xylophone configuration for improvement on both ends of the frequency bandwidth of the detector. We consider binary neutron star sources in our study, as examples of sources already observed with the current-generation detectors and ones which hold most promise given the broader frequency band and higher sensitivity of the third-generation detectors. We estimate parameters of the sources, with different kinds of configurations of the Einstein Telescope detector, varying arm lengths, as well as shapes and alignments. Overall, we find little improvement with respect to changing the shape, or alignment. However, there are noticeable differences in the estimates of some parameters, including tidal deformability, when varying the arm length of the detectors. In addition, we also study the effect of changing the laser power, and the lower limit of the frequency band in which we perform the analysis.