Dr Hannah Middleton

LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antennae, is a large-scale ESA and NASA mission. It will detect gravitational waves in the frequency range 0.1mHz-1Hz from sources including massive black hole binaries, stellar mass compact binaries, and extreme mass ratio inspirals. The mission recently passed the major milestone of adoption by ESA and is scheduled for launch in 2035. Amongst the LISA observational challenges is the  question of whether Galactic compact binaries comprised of black holes and neutron stars can be distinguished from the vast number of Galactic double white dwarf signals expected. In this study, we do a mock analysis of 300 black hole and neutron star binary systems. Using the recovered masses, we determine  which systems have measured system masses that enable them to be distinguished from double white dwarf systems.

Credit: ESA CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO