paper

LISA sources from young massive and open stellar clusters

arXiv:2006.14587 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.102.103002

Abstract

I study the potential role of young massive (YMCs) and open star clusters (OCs) in assembling stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) which would be detectable as persistent gravitational-wave (GW) sources by the forthcoming LISA mission. The energetic dynamical interactions inside star clusters make them factories of assembling BBHs and other types of double-compact binaries that undergo general-relativistic (GR) inspiral and merger. The initial phase of such inspirals would, typically, sweep through the LISA GW band. Here, such LISA sources are studied from a set of evolutionary models of star clusters with masses ranging over that represent YMCs and intermediate-aged OCs in metal-rich and metal-poor environments of the Local Universe. These models are evolved with long-term, direct, relativistic many-body computations incorporating state-of-the-art stellar-evolutionary and remnant-formation models. Based on models of Local Universe constructed with such model clusters, it is shown that YMCs and intermediate-aged OCs would yield several 10s to 100s of LISA BBH sources at the current cosmic epoch with GW frequency within and signal-to-noise-ratio (S/N) , assuming a mission lifetime of 5 or 10 years. Such LISA BBHs would have a bimodal distribution in total mass, be generally eccentric (), and typically have similar component masses although mass-asymmetric systems are possible. Intrinsically, there would be 1000s of present-day, LISA-detectable BBHs from YMCs and OCs. That way, YMCs and OCs would provide a significant and the dominant contribution to the stellar-mass BBH population detectable by LISA. A small fraction, %, of these BBHs would undergo GR inspiral to make it to LIGO-Virgo GW frequency band and merge, within the mission timespan; % would do so within twice the timespan.

arXiv comment13 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Extended descriptions, discussions, and bibliography; results unaltered. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

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