Seismic noise limit for ground-based performance measurements of an inertial sensor using a torsion balance

A torsion balance, which is sensitive to force or torque, has been employed to investigate the residual disturbances of high-precision inertial sensors for the LISA Pathfinder and LISA missions. These experiments are inevitably disturbed by the seismic noise. In this paper, the impact of the seismic noise is theoretically analysed, and the corresponding experimental result is consistent with theoretical estimation. Finally, the seismic noise limit for the ground-based torsion balance experiments for performance investigation of an inertial sensor for the LISA mission is discussed. The results show that the local seismic noise should be carefully considered for further experiments with higher resolution.