Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2012-01-17
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Submitted to GW Notes; abstract abridged due to arXiv requirements
Scientific paper
This document introduces the exciting and fundamentally new science and astronomy that the European New Gravitational Wave Observatory (NGO) mission (derived from the previous LISA proposal) will deliver. The mission (which we will refer to by its informal name "eLISA") will survey for the first time the low-frequency gravitational wave band (about 0.1 mHz to 1 Hz), with sufficient sensitivity to detect interesting individual astrophysical sources out to z = 15. The eLISA mission will discover and study a variety of cosmic events and systems with high sensitivity: coalescences of massive black holes binaries, brought together by galaxy mergers; mergers of earlier, less-massive black holes during the epoch of hierarchical galaxy and black-hole growth; stellar-mass black holes and compact stars in orbits just skimming the horizons of massive black holes in galactic nuclei of the present era; extremely compact white dwarf binaries in our Galaxy, a rich source of information about binary evolution and about future Type Ia supernovae; and possibly most interesting of all, the uncertain and unpredicted sources, for example relics of inflation and of the symmetry-breaking epoch directly after the Big Bang. eLISA's measurements will allow detailed studies of these signals with high signal-to-noise ratio, addressing most of the key scientific questions raised by ESA's Cosmic Vision programme in the areas of astrophysics and cosmology. They will also provide stringent tests of general relativity in the strong-field dynamical regime, which cannot be probed in any other way. This document not only describes the science but also gives an overview on the mission design and orbits.
Amaro-Seoane Pau
Aoudia Sofiane
Babak Stanislav
Berti Emanuele
Binetruy Pierre
No associations
LandOfFree
eLISA: Astrophysics and cosmology in the millihertz regime does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with eLISA: Astrophysics and cosmology in the millihertz regime, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and eLISA: Astrophysics and cosmology in the millihertz regime will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-395706