IVth School of Astroparticle Physics
May 27th - June 1st, 2013
OHP, Saint Michel l'Observatoire

Gravitational Waves

eLISA : exploring the millihertz regime of gravitational waves

Edward PORTER
Astroparticule et Cosmologie (APC)

Course
I will present a proposal for a future ESA mission to search for sources such as supermassive black holes, cosmic superstrings and possibly even a stochastic background from the early Universe.
Chapters
  1. eLISA
    1. Mission concept
    2. Orbits
  2. Sources and event rates
    1. supermassive black hole binaries
    2. extreme mass ratio inspirals
    3. galactic binaries
    4. cosmic superstrings
    5. stochastic background
  3. Source resolution
    1. Advanced algorithms
    2. Astrophysical warnings


Abstract

eLISA is a European proposal for a future ESA mission to detect gravitational waves in the millihertz regime.  As this mission will explore the emission of gravitational waves from sources such as supermassive black hole binaries, it will provide us with a method of examining the strong field regime of general relativity, as well as following the growth and evolution of the massive black holes in the center of galaxies at high z.   In this presentation we will review the mission concept, the astrophysical sources and their event rates,and finally we will look at the difficulties for source resolution and the extraction of astrophysical information.


Bibliography
    • eLISA : astrophysics and cosmology in the millihertz regime. P. Amaro-Seoane et al, arXiv:1201.3621
    • An overview of LISA data analysis algorithms. E.K. Porter. arXiv:0910.0373
    • The Mock LISA data challenges : from challenge 3 to challenge 4. S. Babak et al, arXiv:0912.0548

 

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