The construction and use of LISA sensitivity curves

TL;DR

This paper explains how to construct and utilize LISA sensitivity curves to evaluate the detectability of gravitational wave sources, providing a practical Python tool based on the 2018 design parameters.

Contribution

It details the methodology for creating LISA sensitivity curves and demonstrates their application to various binary systems, including sky-averaged and localized sensitivities.

Findings

Sensitivity curves enable estimation of signal-to-noise ratios for binaries.

The Python notebook facilitates practical computation of LISA sensitivities.

The approach incorporates the 2018 LISA design parameters.

Abstract

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will open the mHz band of the gravitational wave spectrum for exploration. Sensitivity curves are a useful tool for surveying the types of sources that can be detected by the LISA mission. Here we describe how the sensitivity curve is constructed, and how it can be used to compute the signal-to-noise ratio for a wide range of binary systems. We adopt the 2018 LISA Phase-0 reference design parameters. We consider both sky-averaged sensitivities, and the sensitivity to sources at particular sky locations. The calculations are included in a publicly available {\em Python} notebook.