Abstract
Building on the great success of the LISA Pathfinder mission, the outlines of a new LISA mission design were laid out at the 11th International LISA Symposium in Zurich. The revised design calls for three identical spacecraft forming an equilateral triangle with 2.5 million kilometer sides, and two laser links per side delivering full polarization sensitivity. With the demonstrated Pathfinder performance for the disturbance reduction system, and a well studied design for the laser metrology, it is anticipated that the new mission will have a sensitivity very close to the original LISA design. This implies that the mid-band performance, between 0.5 mHz and 3 mHz, will be limited by unresolved signals from compact binaries in our galaxy. Here we use the new LISA design to compute updated estimates for the galactic confusion noise, the number of resolvable galactic binaries, and the accuracy to which key parameters of these systems can be measured.
Highlights
The first direct detection of gravitational waves by the advanced LIGO [1] and the spectacular success of the LISA Pathfinder mission [2] added a renewed energy to the 11th International LISA Symposium in Zurich
The new LISA mission [3] is envisioned to comprise of three identical spacecraft in a triangular formation separated by 2.5 million km in an Earth trailing orbit, w√ith six continuously operating laser links providing heterodyne laser interferometry with pm/ Hz sensitivity along each arm
The six laser links allow the synthesis of two Michelson-like channels that provide instantaneous measurements of the two gravitational wave polarization states, and a third Sagnac-like channel that is relatively insensitive to gravitational waves that can be used to monitor the average noise level in the detector
Summary
The first direct detection of gravitational waves by the advanced LIGO [1] and the spectacular success of the LISA Pathfinder mission [2] added a renewed energy to the 11th International LISA Symposium in Zurich. We provide estimates for the confusion noise level as it evolves over the lifetime of the mission, as well as estimates for the number of resolvable galactic binaries and how well key parameters, such as the orbital periods and sky location, can be determined.
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