Black Hole Science With the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

2021/02/18 by Alberto Sesana
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Black hole (networking) #Cosmology #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Gravitational wave #Interferometry #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Space Science #Supermassive black hole #Universe #astro-ph.CO

paper · pdf · doi:10.3389/fspas.2021.601646

published as Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, Volume 8, id.7 (2021) · Mini review. Contribution to the volume "Gravitational Waves: A New Window to the Universe", Published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Science. Guest Editors Rosalba Perna and Bruno Giacomazzo

openalex publication_date 2021/02/18 · arxiv created 2021/05/24 · arxiv updated 2021/05/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

The author reviews the scientific potential of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a space-borne gravitational wave (GW) observatory to be launched in the early 30s. Thanks to its sensitivity in the milli-Hz frequency range, LISA will reveal a variety of GW sources across the Universe, from our Solar neighborhood potentially all the way back to the Big Bang, promising to be a game changer in our understanding of astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics. This review dives in the LISA Universe, with a specific focus on black hole science, including the formation and evolution of massive black holes in galaxy centers, the dynamics of dense nuclei and formation of extreme mass ratio inspirals, and the astrophysics of stellar-origin black hole binaries.

Citations

• Detecting massive black hole binaries and unveiling their cosmic history\n with gravitational wave observations
• LSST Science Book, Version 2.0
• LISA capture sources: Approximate waveforms, signal-to-noise ratios, and parameter estimation accuracy
• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Can environmental effects spoil precision gravitational-wave astrophysics?
• Impact of mergers on LISA parameter estimation for nonspinning black hole binaries
• Measuring Black Hole Spin Using X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy
• The stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary systems: implications for observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Measuring Distance and Properties of the Milky Way’s Central Supermassive Black Hole with Stellar Orbits
• The gravitational wave signal from the Galactic disk population of binaries containing two compact objects
• Alignment of the Spins of Supermassive Black Holes Prior to Coalescence
• LISA extreme-mass-ratio inspiral events as probes of the black hole mass function
• Theory-Agnostic Constraints on Black-Hole Dipole Radiation with Multiband Gravitational-Wave Astrophysics
• Concise estimate of the expected number of detections for stellar-mass binary black holes by eLISA
• Science with the space-based interferometer LISA. V. Extreme mass-ratio inspirals
• Relativistic dynamics and extreme mass ratio inspirals
• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole
• Laser Interferometer Space Antenna