LISA Sources in Globular Clusters

Abstract

Globular clusters house a population of compact binaries that will be interesting gravitational wave sources for LISA. We provide estimates for the numbers of sources of several categories and discuss the sensitivity of LISA to detecting these sources. The estimated total number of detectable sources ranges from about 10 to about 1000 with gravitational wave frequencies above 1 mHz. These sources are typically undetectable by any other means and thus offer an opportunity for doing true gravitational-wave astronomy. The detection of these sources would provide information about both binary star evolution and the dynamics of globular clusters.Comment: Contribution to Proceedings of 3rd LISA Symposium 7 pages, added reference