# Detectability of Gravitational Wave from a population of Inspiralling   Black Holes in Milky Way Mass Galaxies

**Authors:** Razieh Emami (Center for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian), Abraham, Loeb (Center for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian)

arXiv: 1903.02579 · 2021-03-17

## TL;DR

This paper estimates the rate of gravitational wave inspirals from stellar-mass black holes near supermassive black holes in Milky Way-like galaxies, highlighting the potential for detection by LISA through a population-based approach.

## Contribution

It introduces a population-based method using orbit-averaged Fokker-Planck and post-processing to estimate inspiral rates and GW detectability in Milky Way mass galaxies.

## Key findings

- Inspiral rate per galaxy is approximately 10^{-5} per year.
- Collective galaxy population could produce detectable GW signals in LISA.
- Angular momentum diffusion enhances eccentricity and inspiral probability.

## Abstract

We estimate the rate of inspiral for a population of stellar mass BHs in the star cluster around the super massive black hole at the center of Milky Way mass galaxies. Our approach is based on an orbit averaged Fokker Planck approach. This is then followed by a post-processing approach, which incorporates the impact of the angular momentum diffusion and the GW dissipation in the evolution of system. We make a sample of 10000 BHs with different initial semi-major and eccentricities with the distribution of $f_c(a)/a$ and $e$, respectively. Where $f_c(a)$ refers to the phase-space distribution function for cth species. Angular momentum diffusion leads to an enhancement in the eccentricity of every system in the above sample and so increases the rate of inspiral. We compute the fraction of time that every system spends in the LISA band with the signal to noise ratio $\rm{SNR} \geq 8$. Every system eventually approaches the loss-cone with a replenishment rate given by the diffusion rate of the cluster, $\mu/ \rm{Gyr}^{-1} \lesssim 1 $. This small rate reduces the total rate of the inspiral for individual MW mass galaxies with an estimate $R_{obs} \lesssim 10^{-5} yr^{-1}$. It is expected though that a collection of $N_{gal} \simeq 10^4$ MW mass galaxies lead to an observable GW signal in the LISA band.

## Full text

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## Figures

7 figures with captions in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1903.02579/full.md

## References

26 references — full list in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1903.02579/full.md

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1903.02579