Astrophysicists are preparing to tune into gravitational waves at new frequencies

October 15, 2024

In early 2024, the European Space Agency officially adopted the LISA mission (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) as the world’s first space-based gravitational wave observatory, with its launch set for 2035. LISA will provide a revolutionary view into the Universe by capturing gravitational waves in a frequency range inaccessible to ground-based detectors, allowing scientists to study entirely new astrophysical phenomena. As LISA opens this unexplored window, it poses exciting challenges for the astrophysics community, which must now focus on identifying the scientific questions that LISA will answer and developing the tools to do so. From November 5 to 7, 2024, more than a 100 researchers will gather at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) in Garching bei München to participate in the LISA Astrophysics Working Group Meeting, where they will explore how LISA can deepen our understanding of black holes, stars, galaxies, and other astrophysical objects across the Universe.

The LISA mission will open a new window into the Universe by detecting gravitational waves in the frequency range of 0.1 mHz to 0.1 Hz that are not accessible with Earth-based detectors due to the inherent seismic noise on the ground. In this regime, LISA will observe a variety of astrophysical phenomena, including binary systems of (super)massive black holes, stellar-mass black holes spiraling into more massive ones, close compact binary stars within our Galaxy, and even exoplanets that orbit around them. LISA’s sensitivity will enable the detection of stellar black hole systems years before they merge, offering a unique opportunity to study these extreme environments. The mission also holds the potential to uncover a stochastic gravitational-wave background and discover entirely new unexpected sources.

The upcoming workshop, hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, will bring together members of the LISA Astrophysics Working Group. As the largest working group in the LISA Consortium, the Astrophysics Working Group spans a broad range of topics, including the study of individual gravitational-wave sources, their populations, and the astrophysical mechanisms that govern their formation and evolution. In a mixture of science talks, discussions, and hands-on project work, the workshop participants will focus on key astrophysical questions that can be answered using LISA observations. This event marks an important milestone in advancing the astrophysical potential of LISA, which will drive forward our understanding of the Universe’s most extreme and previously unobservable phenomena.

 

 

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