Low-frequency gravitational radiation from coalescing massive black hole binaries in hierarchical cosmologies

Details Low-frequency gravitational radiation from coalescing massive black hole binaries in hierarchical cosmologies Low-frequency gravitational radiation from coalescing massive black hole binaries in hierarchical cosmologies

2004-01-26

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0401543v2

Astrophys.J. 611 (2004) 623-632

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

11 pages, 8 figues. Revised version accepted to be published in ApJ Discussion on number counts corrected and expanded

Scientific paper

10.1086/422185

We compute the expected gravitational wave signal from coalescing massive black hole (MBH) binaries at the center of galaxies in a hierarchical structure formation scenario in which seed holes of intermediate mass form far up in the dark halo merger tree. The merger history of DM halos and MBHs is followed from z=20 to the present in a LCDM cosmology. MBHs get incorporated through halo mergers into larger and larger structures, sink to the center owing to dynamical friction against the DM background, accrete cold material in the merger remnant, and form MBH binary systems. Stellar dynamical interactions cause the hardening of the binary at large separations, while gravitational wave emission takes over at small radii and leads to the final coalescence of the pair. The integrated emission from inspiraling MBH binaries results in a gravitational wave background (GWB). The characteristic strain spectrum has the standard h_c(f)\propto f^{-2/3} behavior only in the range 1E-91E-6 Hz, the strain amplitude is shaped by the convolution of last stable circular orbit emission. We discuss the observability of inspiraling MBH binaries by the planned LISA. Over a 3-year observing period LISA should resolve this GWB into discrete sources, detecting ~60 (~250) individual events above a S/N=5 (S/N=1) confidence level. (Abridged)

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