The effect of mission duration on LISA science objectives

Amaro Seoane, P. et al. (2022) The effect of mission duration on LISA science objectives. General Relativity and Gravitation, 54(1), 3. (doi: 10.1007/s10714-021-02889-x)

Abstract

The science objectives of the LISA mission have been defined under the implicit assumption of a 4-years continuous data stream. Based on the performance of LISA Pathfinder, it is now expected that LISA will have a duty cycle of ≈0.75, which would reduce the effective span of usable data to 3 years. This paper reports the results of a study by the LISA Science Group, which was charged with assessing the additional science return of increasing the mission lifetime. We explore various observational scenarios to assess the impact of mission duration on the main science objectives of the mission. We find that the science investigations most affected by mission duration concern the search for seed black holes at cosmic dawn, as well as the study of stellar-origin black holes and of their formation channels via multi-band and multi-messenger observations. We conclude that an extension to 6 years of mission operations is recommended.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Berry, Dr Christopher
• Authors: Amaro Seoane, P., Arca Sedda, M., Babak, S., Berry, C. P.L., Berti, E., Bertone, G., Blas, D., Bogdanović, T., Bonetti, M., Breivik, K., Brito, R., Caldwell, R., Capelo, P. R., Caprini, C., Cardoso, V., Carson, Z., Chen, H.-Y., Chua, A. J. K., Dvorkin, I., Haiman, Z., Heisenberg, L., Isi, M., Karnesis, N., Kavanagh, B. J., Littenberg, T. B., Mangiagli, A., Marcoccia, P., Maselli, A., Nardini, G., Pani, P., Peloso, M., Pieroni, M., Ricciardone, A., Sesana, A., Tamanini, N., Toubiana, A., Valiante, R., Vretinaris, S., Weir, D. J., Yagi, K., and Zimmerman, A.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
• Research Centre: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy > Institute for Gravitational Research
• Journal Name: General Relativity and Gravitation
• Publisher: Springer
• ISSN: 0001-7701
• ISSN (Online): 1572-9532
• Published Online: 27 December 2021
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2021 The Authors
• First Published: First published in General Relativity and Gravitation 54(1): 3
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License