Feb 02, 2012
We review the expected science performance of the New Gravitational-Wave Observatory (NGO, a.k.a. LISA), a mission under study by the European Space Agency for launch in the early 2020s.
Pau Amaro-Seoane, Sofiane Aoudia, Stanislav Babak, Pierre Binétruy, Emanuele Berti, Alejandro Bohé, Chiara Caprini, Monica Colpi, Neil J. Cornish, Karsten Danzmann, Jean-François Dufaux, Jonathan Gair, Oliver Jennrich, Philippe Jetzer, Antoine Klein, Ryan N. Lang, Alberto Lobo, Tyson Littenberg, Sean T. McWilliams, Gijs Nelemans, Antoine Petiteau, Edward K. Porter, Bernard F. Schutz, Alberto Sesana, Robin Stebbins, Tim Sumner, Michele Vallisneri, Stefano Vitale, Marta Volonteri, Henry Ward
(Submitted on 03 Feb 2012)
We review the expected science performance of the New Gravitational-Wave Observatory (NGO, a.k.a. LISA), a mission under study by the European Space Agency for launch in the early 2020s. LISA will survey the low-frequency gravitational-wave sky (from 0.1 mHz to 1 Hz), detecting and characterizing a broad variety of systems and events throughout the Universe, including the coalescences of massive black holes brought together by galaxy mergers; the inspirals of stellar-mass black holes and compact stars into central galactic black holes; several millions of ultracompact binaries, both detached and mass transferring, in the Galaxy; and possibly unforeseen sources such as the relic gravitational-wave radiation from the early Universe. LISA's high signal-to-noise measurements will provide new insight into the structure and history of the Universe, and they will test general relativity in its strong-field dynamical regime.