Tunable "free-mass" gravitational-wave detector

We propose a new type of detector for gravitational radiation. It consists essentially of two masses whose relative motion produces the driving emf of a resonant L-C circuit. The relative momentum of the masses induced by a gravitational wave is determined by the current in the circuit. A unique feature of this system is its ability to be tuned over a wide frequency range. If a quality factor Q~10⁸ can be achieved in the circuit, a laboratory-size detector cooled to 0.05 K in the absence of other noise could detect a continuous wave metric perturbation h3×10^-26 at the frequency of the Crab pulsar after integration for 100 days.