Probing Stellar Dynamics in Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

Electromagnetic observations over the last 15 years have yielded a growing appreciation for the importance of supermassive black holes (SMBH) to the evolution of galaxies, and for the intricacies of dynamical interactions in our own Galactic center. Here we show that future low-frequency gravitational wave observations, alone or in combination with electromagnetic data, will open up unique windows to these processes. In particular, gravitational wave detections in the 10^{-5}-10^{-1} Hz range will yield SMBH masses and spins to unprecedented precision and will provide clues to the properties of the otherwise undetectable stellar remnants expected to populate the centers of galaxies. Such observations are therefore keys to understanding the interplay between SMBHs and their environments.

8 pages, Science white paper for the Astro2010 Decadal Survey

References in corpus (4)

• Monitoring stellar orbits around the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center
• Strong mass segregation around a massive black hole
• Probing black holes at low redshift using LISA EMRI observations
• Influence of conservative corrections on parameter estimation for extreme-mass-ratio inspirals

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Gravitational Wave Memory from Gamma Ray Bursts' Jets
• Excitation of Kerr quasinormal modes in extreme--mass-ratio inspirals
• Exploring Dark Forces with Multimessenger Studies of Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals
• The Promise of Low-Frequency Gravitational Wave Astronomy
• Highly accurate and efficient self-force computations using time-domain methods: Error estimates, validation, and optimization