1999/12/08 by Scott A. Hughes, Hughes, Scott A.
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/9912031
7 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the 3rd Edoardo Amaldi meeting
arxiv created 1999/12/08 · openalex publication_date 1999/12/08 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Space-based gravitational-wave interferometers such as LISA will be sensitive to the inspiral of stellar mass compact objects into black holes with masses in the range of roughly 105 solar masses to (a few) 107 solar masses. During the last year of inspiral, the compact body spends several hundred thousand orbits spiraling from several Schwarzschild radii to the last stable orbit. The gravitational waves emitted from these orbits probe the strong-field region of the black hole spacetime and can make possible high precision tests and measurements of the black hole's properties. Measuring such waves will require a good theoretical understanding of the waves' properties, which in turn requires a good understanding of strong-field radiation reaction and of properties of the black hole's astrophysical environment which could complicate waveform generation. In these proceedings, I review estimates of the rate at which such inspirals occur in the universe, and discuss what is being done and what must be done further in order to calculate the inspiral waveform.