Searching for extreme mass ratio inspirals in LISA: from identification to parameter estimation

TL;DR

This paper presents a new search strategy for detecting and estimating parameters of extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) in LISA data, addressing challenges posed by complex, long-duration signals and large search spaces.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel search method that enables detection and parameter estimation of EMRIs across wide priors in noisy LISA data.

Findings

Successful identification of EMRI signals in simulated noisy data.

Effective parameter estimation demonstrated for complex EMRI signals.

The strategy improves detection prospects for future LISA observations.

Abstract

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a planned space-based observatory designed to detect gravitational waves (GWs) within the millihertz frequency range. LISA is anticipated to observe the inspiral of compact objects into black holes at the centers of galaxies, so called extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs). However, the extraction of these long-lived complex signals is challenging due to the large size and multimodality of the search space. In this study, we introduce a new search strategy that allows us to find EMRI signals in noisy data from wide priors all the way to performing parameter estimation. This work is an important step in understanding how to extract EMRIs from future LISA data.