Laser Interferometric Detectors of Gravitational Waves

A laser interferometric detector of gravitational waves is studied and a complete solution (to first order in the metric perturbation) of the coupled Einstein-Maxwell equations with appropriate boundary conditions for the light beams is determined. The phase shift, the light deflection and the rotation of the polarization axis induced by gravitational waves are computed. The results are compared with previous literature, and are shown to hold also for detectors which are large in comparison with the gravitational wavelength.