The Effect of Mission Duration on LISA Science Objectives
Abstract
The science objectives of the LISA mission have been defined under the implicit assumption of a 4 yr continuous data stream. Based on the performance of LISA Pathfinder, it is now expected that LISA will have a duty cycle of , which would reduce the effective span of usable data to 3 yr. This paper reports the results of a study by the LISA Science Group, which was charged with assessing the additional science return of increasing the mission lifetime. We explore various observational scenarios to assess the impact of mission duration on the main science objectives of the mission. We find that the science investigations most affected by mission duration concern the search for seed black holes at cosmic dawn, as well as the study of stellar-origin black holes and of their formation channels via multi-band and multi-messenger observations. We conclude that an extension to 6 yr of mission operations is recommended.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2107.09665,
title = {The Effect of Mission Duration on LISA Science Objectives},
author = {Pau Amaro Seoane and Manuel Arca Sedda and Stanislav Babak and Christopher P. L. Berry and Emanuele Berti and Gianfranco Bertone and Diego Blas and Tamara Bogdanović and Matteo Bonetti and Katelyn Breivik and Richard Brito and Robert Caldwell and Pedro R. Capelo and Chiara Caprini and Vitor Cardoso and Zack Carson and Hsin-Yu Chen and Alvin J. K. Chua and Irina Dvorkin and Zoltan Haiman and Lavinia Heisenberg and Maximiliano Isi and Nikolaos Karnesis and Bradley J. Kavanagh and Tyson B. Littenberg and Alberto Mangiagli and Paolo Marcoccia and Andrea Maselli and Germano Nardini and Paolo Pani and Marco Peloso and Mauro Pieroni and Angelo Ricciardone and Alberto Sesana and Nicola Tamanini and Alexandre Toubiana and Rosa Valiante and Stamatis Vretinaris and David Weir and Kent Yagi and Aaron Zimmerman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.09665},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
50 pages, 19 figures, 5 tables. Matches version published in GERG