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LISA Science Team
Beyond Einstein
LISA Pathfinder
LISA International Science Community
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Brief Introduction
Gravitational radiation has the potential of providing a powerful new window on the
universe for observing the behavior of astronomical systems under conditions of
strongly non-linear gravity and super-high velocities. Because of seismic and
gravity gradient noise on Earth, searches for gravitational radiation at
frequencies lower than 10 Hz must be done in space. The frequency range
10-4 to 1 Hz contains many of the most astrophysically interesting
sources. In this band, predicted emission includes that associated with the
formation or coalescence of massive black holes in galactic nuclei. LISA is a
constellation of three spacecraft that uses laser interferometry to precisely
measure distance changes between widely separated freely falling test masses housed
in each spacecraft. The spacecrafts are at the corners of an equilateral triangle
5x106 km on a side in heliocentric orbit. LISA should observe low
frequency gravitational radiation from likely sources out to cosmological
distances, and would be an important complement to the ground-based experiments
already being operated. LISA is a NASA/ESA mission and is expected to launch at the
beginning of the next decade.
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Latest News
The proceedings of the Sixth
International LISA Symposium were recently published by the American
Institute of Physics (AIP Conference Proceedings Volume 873, ISBN:
978-0-7354-0372-7). Ordering information and electronic versions of the
articles can be found at the
AIP
website.
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