In addition to ground-based observatories, LISA will be able to observe very different sources of gravitational waves
In addition to ground-based observatories, LISA will be able to observe very different sources of gravitational waves
In addition to ground-based observatories, LISA will be able to observe very different sources of gravitational waves. These include, for example, extremely short-period binary stars in our galaxy, massive black holes with up to several tens of millions of solar masses in the centers of distant galaxies, the "inspiral" of compact objects such as stars and neutron stars into massive black holes, and black holes with masses comparable to the sun orbiting each other ever more closely. Their amplitudes ("Characteristic Strain") are plotted over the gravitational wave frequencies. The sensitivity of the instrument is shown as a dashed line. In addition to the galactic background (grey) and short-period binary stars in our galaxy (blue dots and stars), the temporal developments of binary systems of massive black holes (MBHBs - Massive Black Hole Binaries) and the inspiral of low-mass objects into massive black holes (EMRIs - Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals) are shown. Also shown is the evolution over time of the first detected source GW150914 (blue line), which long ago moved out of the LISA frequency band and into that of LIGO. The red and grey lines show a similar development for other sources.
