The gravitational wave background from star-massive black hole fly-bys
arXiv:0902.3253 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15204.x
Abstract
Stars on eccentric orbits around a massive black hole (MBH) emit bursts of gravitational waves (GWs) at periapse. Such events may be directly resolvable in the Galactic centre. However, if the star does not spiral in, the emitted GWs are not resolvable for extra-galactic MBHs, but constitute a source of background noise. We estimate the power spectrum of this extreme mass ratio burst background (EMBB) and compare it to the anticipated instrumental noise of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). To this end, we model the regions close to a MBH, accounting for mass-segregation, and for processes that limit the presence of stars close to the MBH, such as GW inspiral and hydrodynamical collisions between stars. We find that the EMBB is dominated by GW bursts from stellar mass black holes, and the magnitude of the noise spectrum (f S_GW)^{1/2} is at least a factor ~10 smaller than the instrumental noise. As an additional result of our analysis, we show that LISA is unlikely to detect relativistic bursts in the Galactic centre.
Accepted for publication by MNRAS; New appendix on population of phase space in presence of gravitational wave inspiral
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Cited by in corpus (7)
- Secular Stellar Dynamics near a Massive Black Hole
- A New Type of Extreme-mass-ratio Inspirals Produced by Tidal Capture of Binary Black Holes
- Expectations for extreme-mass-ratio bursts from the Galactic Centre
- Very extreme mass-ratio bursts in the Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies in relation to space-borne detectors
- Gravitational Wave Peeps from EMRIs and their Implication for LISA Signal Confusion Noise
- Gravitational Wave Peep Contributions to Background Signal Confusion Noise for LISA
- Prospects for detecting asteroid-mass primordial black holes in extreme mass-ratio inspirals with continuous gravitational waves