The Low Frequency Gravitational Universe
Monica Colpi (Università di Milano Bicocca)
Wednesday 21/12/2022 @ 11:30, CNR convention center - sala plenaria
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will extend the hunt for gravitational wave events to the hitherto unexplored frequency interval between 0.1 and 100 mHz, anticipated to be the richest in variety of sources. LISA will detect gravitational waves from Milky-Way-like massive black holes out to redshifts as high a ? ? 20, the long-duration inspiral of stellar black holes around massive black holes, the early inspiral of stellar black hole binaries and the nearly monochromatic signal emitted by a myriad of ultra compact binaries, mostly double white dwarfs in the Milky Way, as single sources and as an unresolved foreground. LISA promises a quantum leap in knowledge of the ”astrophysical” black holes lurking at the centres of galaxies and advances in understanding their formation and evolution histories. LISA can answer in a unique way a number of challenging questions on massive black holes: Are they Kerr? How do their masses and spins evolve with cosmic time? Is there a fil rouge connecting the stellar and the massive black holes, rooted in the physics of gravitational collapse? Can we detect “light” during a massive black hole merger? And if so, what can we learn about gas accretion in dynamical, violently changing spacetimes?