LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, will be the first space mission ever to survey the Universe by detecting low-frequency gravitational waves. LISA is a space mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It was selected by ESA in 2017 and adopted in January 2024, which means it enters implementation...
After an open call in February by ESA, and shortly thereafter by NASA, the LISA Science Team was announced in July this summer. The European selection consisted of 11 representatives from ESA member states, as well as a representative from the LISA consortium, 6 NASA-selected members, and project scientists from both NASA and LISA. The team acts as a focus for the interests of the scientific...
ILIADA is an in-orbit demonstrator (IOD) planned to fly in 2026 as a part of an Earth Observation Cubesat in the framework of the NewSpace Strategy from the Generalitat of Catalonia. The primary goal of ILIADA is to raise the TRL of new technologies and sensor elements of the future LISA Diagnostics Subsystem. It will include temperature sensors, magnetometers (AMR and MEMs based) and a...
The SDS task is to measure various physical parameters of the spacecraft such as temperature, radiation, and magnetism, since all these magnitudes can induce forces on the test masses that could not be discerned from a gravitational force. In this talk, we will be focusing on the instrumentation of the SDS used for the magnetic and temperature subsystem. First of all, a review of the...
The Transient High Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (THESEUS) is a medium sized space mission (previous candidate for M5) of the European Space Agency (ESA), currently proposed for M7 for evaluation (phase A) and with possible launch (if approved) in 2037. Its main objectives are the Early universe research through the observation of gamma rays (GRBs) and the study of electromagnetic...
I will present our recent work to show how ULDM generates modulation of GWs to be detected by LISA, and how this can be used to detect ULDM in so far unconstrained parameter space.
We created the APOGEE-GALEX-Gaia catalog to study white dwarf (WD) binaries. This database aims to create a minimally biased sample of WD binary systems identified from a combination of GALEX, Gaia, and APOGEE data to increase the number of WD binaries with orbital parameters and chemical compositions. We identify 3414 sources as WD binary candidates, with non-degenerate companions of spectral...
Reconstructing the properties of the astrophysical population of binary compact objects in the universe is a key science goal of gravitational wave detectors. This goal is hindered by the finite strain, frequency sensitivity and observing time of current and future detectors: implying that we can in general observe only a selected subset of the underlying population, with limited event...
The Distributed Data Processing Center (DDPC) is the entity within the European Science Ground Segment, organised by ESA member states, that extracts the scientific products (L3 Data) from the noise corrected data (L1 data). The talk will first summarise the objectives and organisation of the DDPC, and then focus on the challenge of developing waveform models for LISA science, and of...
Parameter estimation with full Bayesian inference remains one of the outstanding challenges for the LISA data analysis infrastructure. Very few studies have focused on this issue and have been reduced to the use of Fourier domain waveforms. The limiting factor of this approach is the need for the development of approximate transfer functions that replicate the TDI response in the Fourier...
The talk will summarise ongoing efforts at UIB in gravitational wave data analysis for LISA, and for ground based detectors from a LISA perspective, focussing on waveform modelling, including numerical relativity,
and parameter estimation.
The Gaia space astrometry mission of ESA is collecting data from more than one billion stars of the Milky Way and beyond, meaning over 136 TB of raw data, nearly 260 billion combined measurements (star transits) and over 2.5 trillion astrometric measurements so far. Even though these numbers may seem "manageable" with nowadays technology, it was a huge challenge back in 2005 when the Gaia Data...
LISA will be the first space-based gravitational-wave and will operate in the milli-Hertz frequency band, with is rich in different astrophysical and cosmological sources. LISA is a signal-dominated detector which means that the data stream always contains overlapping sources, among them millions of galactic ultracompact binaries. In order to detect and estimate the physical parameters of...
Ultra-compact X-ray binaries are promising sources for LISA because of their short orbital periods. For such binaries with neutron-star primaries, that have been spun-up by angular momentum donations to ~ms periods, internal quadrupole moments sourced by accretion-built mountains may be large (e.g. in 4U 1728−34 and 4U 1820−30). Such systems may thus be simultaneously visible to LVK/ET and...
LISA will play a crucial role in unveiling the universe of gravitational wave sources, particularly by probing the inspirals and mergers of binary compact objects (BCOs) such as black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs over cosmological distances. To fully exploit the wealth of data that LISA will provide, we need accurate predictions for the properties and rates of these binary mergers...
We develop a tool for the analysis of stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds from cosmological first-order phase transitions with LISA: we initiate a template databank for these signals, prototype their searches, and forecast their reconstruction. The templates encompass the gravitational wave signals sourced by bubble collisions, sound waves and turbulence. Accounting for Galactic and...
The Loop Quantum Gravity group at IEM-CSIC studies global quantum effects that may influence the emission of gravitational radiation during the final stages of supermassive black hole coalescence. We use Hamiltonian formalisms that allow us to relate black holes with cosmological backgrounds and establish a correspondence between the quantum field theories for gauge invariants in both cases....
I will review the mechanism for primordial gravitational wave generation in axion-inflation models comprising a gauge sector coupled via a Chern-Simons term. I will survey both the Abelian and non-Abelian cases and provide details on the concrete possibility of primordial black hole production. I will elaborate on specific examples whose gravitational signal is detecteable by LISA.
Time-frequency domain coherent search has played a significant role in the analysis of data from ground-based detectors. It does not rely on an accurate waveform and noises model, making it well-suited for identifying unexpected sources. This presentation will introduce the ongoing development of the time-frequency domain coherent search pipeline and explore its potential application to LISA.
One of the primary challenges in analyzing gravitational wave data from future ground and space-based experiments is the need for rapid waveform and likelihood evaluation to expedite Bayesian analysis. Although surrogate models are commonly used to address this, they are limited to finite regions of the parameter space, and their computational cost can escalate significantly as higher...
LISA Pathfinder was a mission designed to test key technologies required for gravitational wave detection in space. Magnetic forces have an important impact on the instrument sensitivity in the low frequency regime below the millihertz. A precise characterization of the magnetic properties of LISA Pathfinder free falling test-masses is of special interest for future gravitational wave...
The upcoming launch of LISA has recently strengthened the interest in exploring Standard Model extensions where a gravitational wave-producing, strong first-order electroweak phase transition (SFOEWPT) occurs in the early universe. One of the preferred approaches to the study of thermally induced FOPTs is through the construction of a dimensionally reduced effective field theory (3dEFT). In...
The Hamiltonian formalism of perturbation theory in general relativity is a powerful tool for exploring physical aspects beyond the mathematical formulation of an astrophysical system. Its broad range of applications makes the analysis of spherically symmetric backgrounds particularly interesting. The Loop Quantum Gravity group at IEM-CSIC has focused on studying the final stages of...
The prospect of observing loud ringdowns from massive black hole mergers with LISA opens an unprecedented window into the strong-field regime of gravity. Using this opportunity hinges on our ability to extend the current paradigms of black hole perturbation theory and ringdown modelling to account for dynamical non-linearities. In this talk, I will present a new approach to black hole...
