The Enhanced Population of Extreme Mass-ratio Inspirals in the LISA Band from Supermassive Black Hole Binaries

Abstract

Extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) take place when a stellar-mass black hole (BH) merges with a supermassive BH (SMBH). The gravitational-wave emission from such an event is expected to be detectable by the future Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and other millihertz detectors. It was recently suggested that the EMRI rate in SMBH binary systems is orders of magnitude higher than the EMRI rate around a single SMBH with the same total mass. Here we show that this high rate can produce thousands of SMBH–BH sources at a redshift of unity. We predict that LISA may detect a few hundred of these EMRIs with signal-to-noise ratio above S/N ≥8 within a 4 yr mission lifetime. The remaining subthreshold sources will contribute to a large confusion noise, which is approximately an order of magnitude above LISA’s sensitivity level. Finally, we suggest that the individually detectable systems, as well as the background noise from the subthreshold EMRIs, can be used to constrain the SMBH binary fraction in the low-redshift Universe.

Keywords

• Supermassive black holes
• Gravitational wave sources
• Gravitational wave detectors
• Gravitational waves
• Gravitational wave astronomy
• Dwarf galaxies