Abstract
Gravitational wave astronomy has now left its infancy and has become an important tool for probing the most violent phenomena in our Universe. The LIGO/Virgo-KAGRA collaboration operates ground based detectors which cover the frequency band from 10 Hz to the kHz regime. Meanwhile, the pulsar timing array and the soon to launch LISA mission will cover frequencies below 0.1 Hz, leaving a gap in detectable gravitational wave frequencies. Here we show how a laser interferometer on the moon (LION) gravitational wave detector would be sensitive to frequencies from sub Hz to kHz. We find that the sensitivity curve is such that LION can measure compact binaries with masses between 10 and 100M ⊙ at cosmological distances, with redshifts as high as z = 100 and beyond, depending on the spin and the mass ratio of the binaries. LION can detect binaries of compact objects with higher-masses, with very large signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), help us to understand how supermassive black holes got their colossal masses on the cosmological landscape, and it can observe in detail intermediate-mass ratio inspirals at distances as large as at least 100 Gpc. Compact binaries that never reach the LIGO/Virgo sensitivity band can spend significant amounts of time in the LION band, while sources present in the LISA band can be picked up by the detector and observed until their final merger. Since LION covers the deci-Hertz regime with such large SNRs, it truly achieves the dream of multi messenger astronomy.
Highlights
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration [1,2,3] forms a network of gravitational wave observatories covering the Earth
We find that a detector built on the Moon with technology of the third generation detectors features a detection bandwidth between 0.7 Hz and 10 kHz with detection noise hitting a floor of 3 × 10−24 m Hz−1/2 at 10 Hz
laser interferometer on the moon (LION) would make an excellent complement to the existing network, with significant overlap of required technology development
Summary
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration [1,2,3] forms a network of gravitational wave observatories covering the Earth. The upper sensitivity bound of space based detectors is set by the interferometer arm length [9, 10] These barriers create a gap of measurable frequencies which requires a different style of mission to fill. A recent proposal has been submitted to launch many high sensitivity seismometers to the surface of the Moon to push this detection method to its limits [20]. Aside from that, a paper has been submitted to arxiv recently discussing the concept of a lunar gravitational wave detector [21] They focus largely on the astrophysical sources in their sensitivity band. 50 W 2000 nm 40 km Earth surface/1000 1267/1267/698/707 kg 34 km 36 km 3.54/2.05/1.66/2.50 m
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