Constraining Galactic Structure with the LISA White Dwarf Foreground

被引:42
作者
Breivik, Katelyn [1 ]
Mingarelli, Chiara M. F. [2 ,3 ]
Larson, Shane L. [4 ,5 ]
机构
[1] Univ Toronto, Canadian Inst Theoret Astrophys, 60 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 1A7, Canada
[2] Flatiron Inst, Ctr Computat Astrophys, 162 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10010 USA
[3] Univ Connecticut, Dept Phys, 196 Auditorium Rd,U-3046, Storrs, CT 06269 USA
[4] Northwestern Univ, Ctr Interdisciplinary Explorat & Res Astrophys CI, 1800 Sherman Ave, Evanston, IL 60201 USA
[5] Northwestern Univ, Dept Phys & Astron, 2145 Sheridan Rd, Evanston, IL 60208 USA
关键词
Galaxy disks; Galaxy dynamics; Gravitational wave astronomy; White dwarf stars; Stellar populations; MILKY-WAY; DISC; POPULATION; EVOLUTION; BINARIES; STARS; GAIA;
D O I
10.3847/1538-4357/abab99
中图分类号
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号
0704 ;
摘要
White dwarfs (WDs) comprise 95% of all stellar remnants, and are thus an excellent tracer of old stellar populations in the Milky Way. Current and planned telescopes are not able to directly probe the WD population in its entirety due to its inherently low luminosity. However, the Galactic population of double white dwarf binaries (DWDs) gives rise to a millihertz gravitational-wave foreground detectable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Here we show how characterizing the angular power of the WD foreground will enable probes of the Galactic structure in a novel way to determine whether the Galactic WD population traces the spatial distribution of young, bright stars, or traces a vertically heated spatial distribution associated with the Galaxy's oldest stellar populations. We do this using a binary population synthesis study that incorporates different Galactic spatial distributions for the DWD population. We find that the level of anisotropy in the WD foreground's angular power spectrum is dependent on the vertical scale height of the population, but show that multipole coefficients from the spherical harmonic decomposition must be considered individually because of LISA's angular resolution. Finally, we show that LISA can probe the vertical scale height of the Galactic WD population with an accuracy of 300 pc, using the hexadecapole moment of the WD foreground.
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页数:9
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