Seminario DAS: Probing the Universe with the LISA Space Mission

Speaker: Dr. Răzvan Balașov, Postdoctoral Researcher, Universidad de Chile (CL) / Institute of Space Science (RO)

Title: Probing the Universe with the LISA Space Mission

Abstract: The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be the first European space-borne Gravitational Wave (GW) observatory and can be briefly described as a high precision Michelson interferometer comprising three spacecrafts that will orbit in a triangular formation with an ‘arm’ length of 2.5 million kilometers. The LISA Space Mission is a Large-class mission led by ESA and managed by the LISA Consortium (an international collaboration of scientists that mainly represent the involved European states and the USA). Considering the current GW detection activity related to the terrestrial observations (conducted by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration), LISA will represent a complementary study for the GW field, as well as contribute to the Multimessenger Astronomy development for sources that also emit in the electromagnetic spectrum. In this seminar, I will summarize the Scientific Objectives of the LISA mission and integrate them in the context of my current research activity on Massive Black Hole (MBH) formation and evolution, using N-body simulations (previous work and future research plans at DAS, supervised by Prof. Andrés Escala).