Speaker
Dr
Matteo Bonetti
(University of Milano-Bicocca)
Description
Extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), i.e. binary systems comprised by a compact stellar-mass object orbiting a massive black hole, represent primary gravitational wave (GW) targets for the forthcoming LISA mission.
Unfortunately, the astrophysical processes leading to the formation of such systems still remain poorly understood and, consequently, this translates into very large uncertainties for the detection rate of these GW sources, spanning at least three orders of magnitude.
In this talk, by considering different astrophysical formation scenarios available in the literature, we present estimates of the stochastic GW background produced by EMRIs.
In several formation scenarios, resulting in hundreds of detections during the timespan of the LISA mission, a large unresolved population of EMRIs may generate a significant stochastic noise in the LISA frequency band, that in the most extreme cases, can substantially limit the performance of the detector in the bucket of the sensitivity curve.
Primary author
Dr
Matteo Bonetti
(University of Milano-Bicocca)
Co-author
Prof.
Alberto Sesana
(Universita` di Milano Bicocca)
