Thermomechanical Design and Analysis of the Lisa Phase Measurement System

Sammanfattning: Gravitational Waves (GWs) are ripples in the curvature of spacetime that propagate as waves at the speed of light while travelling basically undisturbed from the moment of their creation by accelerated masses. GWs provide unique information about astrophysical sources, such as binary systems, allowing their exploration under a wide range of masses, mass ratios and physical states inaccessible otherwise and therefore opening a new window to observe the universe. The Laser Interferometry Space Antenna (LISA) mission will be a spaceborne gravitational wave observatory that is expected to be launched in 2034. The observatory will operate a near-equilateral triangle constellation of three spacecraft in formation flying around the Sun with Earth-like orbits. The observatory will establish, for the first time, a huge laser interferometer of three arms separated by 2.5 million km at pm/ p H z sensitivity, allowing detection of GW signals in the low-frequencies (mHz) regime. Using technology proven by LISA Pathfinder and GRACE-Follow on mission, the LISA metrology system will continuously operate heterodyne laser interferometers in order to measure the stretching and squeezing of space-time coupled onto their laser links as pm-level pathlength displacements and recorded as tiny µ-cycle phase fluctuations over thousands of seconds by an on-board instrument so-called Phase Measurement System (PMS) or shortly "Phasemeter”. This master thesis investigates the thermo-mechanical design of an engineering model, currently under early phases of development, for the PMS instrument onboard the LISA S/C. The mechanical enclosure has been designed following a modular approach. Each PCB will be assembled into an individual enclosure, so future upgrades in the design without affecting the entire architecture. The thermal analysis conducted so far has concluded with the feasibility of a passive thermal management system in vacuum environments, based on heat conductivity throughout the mechanical enclosure towards the instrument baseplate. In particular, the following instrument features have been included within the analysis: 1. analog signal conditioning electronics, 2. analog-to-digital conversion, and 3. FPGA core signal processing, 4. high-phase fidelity frequency synthesis and 5. frequency distribution chain, i.e., all features with the most stringent thermal requirements of the PMS-EM architecture. Although the high-power consumption demands of the instrument, the proposed thermo-mechanical design showed a suitable implementation for reliable operation of components, below maximal specified temperature ranges, allowing safe operation of the electronics over mission lifetime. As the proposed design relies only on passive conductive heat transfer methods, it is implicit a reduction of instrument complexity, avoiding complex thermal approaches based on heat pipes distributions or active control systems. Moreover, the modular approach and thermal management system enhances the integration with adjacent modules and reduce cost when assembly the instrument within the payload. In this master thesis, it has been also designed and manufactured several mechanical enclosures, together with an active thermal management system, for preliminary prototyping of analog signal acquisition electronics. These prototypes have been tested in air, setting the thermal stability requirement at the thermal reference point (TRP). Test results have verified a thermal stability requirement below 0.1 K/Hz in order to accomplish with the stringent µ-cycle phase noise performance in the mHz frequency band. Further work will test those prototypes in Vacuum conditions, consolidating thermal modelling and noise coupling as initial precursors of the PMS-EM thermally critical module developments.