SAGE: finding IMBH in the black hole desert

Abstract

SAGE (SagnAc interferometer for Gravitational wavE) is a project for a space observatory based on multiple 12-U CubeSats in geosynchronous orbit. The objective is a fast track mission which would fill the observational gap between LISA and ground based observatories. With albeit a lower sensitivity, it would allow early investigation of the nature and event rate of intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) mergers, constraining our understanding of the universe formation by probing the building up of IMBH up to supermassive black holes. Technically, the CubeSats would create a triangular Sagnac interferometer with 140.000km roundtrip arm length, optimized to be sensitive to gravitational waves at frequencies between 10mHz and 2Hz. The nature of the Sagnac measurement makes it almost insensitive to position error, enabling the use of spacecrafts in ballistic trajectories. The light source and recombination units of the interferometer are based on compact fibered technologies without bulk optics. A peak sensitivity of 23 pm/sqrt(Hz) is expected at 1Hz assuming a 200mW internal laser source and 10-centimeter diameter apertures. Because of the absence of a test mass, the main limitation would come from the non-gravitational forces applied on the spacecrafts. However, conditionally upon our ability to partially post-process the effect of solar wind and solar pressure, SAGE would allow detection of gravitational waves with strains as low as a few 1e-19 within the 0.1 to 1Hz range. Averaged over the entire sky, and including the antenna gain of the Sagnac interferometer, the SAGE observatory would sense equal mass black hole mergers in the 1e4 to 1e6 solar masses range up to a luminosity distance of 800Mpc. Additionally, coalescence of stellar black holes (10Msun) around SMBH (IMBH) forming extreme (intermediate) mass ratio inspirals could be detected within a sphere of radius 200Mpc.

arXiv commentAccepted in Class. Quantum Grav

References in corpus (27)

• Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
• Properties of the Binary Black Hole Merger GW150914
• A Survey of z>5.8 Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey I: Discovery of Three New Quasars and the Spatial Density of Luminous Quasars at z~6
• The construction and use of LISA sensitivity curves
• The PyCBC search for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence
• An Intermediate-mass Black Hole of Over 500 Solar Masses in the Galaxy ESO 243-49
• Science with the space-based interferometer eLISA. I: Supermassive black hole binaries
• Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes
• The evolution of massive black holes and their spins in their galactic hosts
• Inspiral-merger-ringdown multipolar waveforms of nonspinning black-hole binaries using the effective-one-body formalism
• GW170817: Implications for the Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background from Compact Binary Coalescences
• Implementing a search for aligned-spin neutron star -- black hole systems with advanced ground based gravitational wave detectors
• Relativistic Dynamics and Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals
• Detecting binary compact-object mergers with gravitational waves: Understanding and Improving the sensitivity of the PyCBC search
• Intermediate-mass black holes in dwarf galaxies out to redshift $\sim$ 2.4 in the Chandra COSMOS Legacy Survey
• The imprint of massive black hole formation models on the LISA data stream
• Galactic binary science with the new LISA design
• A luminous X-ray outburst from an intermediate-mass black hole in an off-centre star cluster
• Descope of the ALIA mission
• Gravitational Waves and Intermediate-mass Black Hole Retention in Globular Clusters
• Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first observing run of Advanced LIGO
• Post-Newtonian evolution of massive black hole triplets in galactic nuclei -- III. A robust lower limit to the nHz stochastic background of gravitational waves
• Gravitational wave sources in the era of multi-frequency gravitational wave astronomy
• Gravitational wave detection in space
• Testing models of supermassive black hole seed formation through gravity waves
• gLISA: geosynchronous Laser Interferometer Space Antenna concepts with off-the-shelf satellites
• Orbit analysis of a geostationary gravitational wave interferometer detector array

Cited by in corpus (8)

• AEDGE: Atomic Experiment for Dark Matter and Gravity Exploration in Space
• The Missing Link in Gravitational-Wave Astronomy: Discoveries waiting in the decihertz range
• Detectability of Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Multiband Gravitational Wave Astronomy
• Gravitational-Wave Lunar Observatory for Cosmology
• Generation of entanglement from mechanical rotation
• Controlling Photon Entanglement with Mechanical Rotation
• Modeling lunar response to gravitational waves using normal-mode approach and tidal forcing
• Detection Landscape in the Deci-Hertz Gravitational-Wave Spectrum