The Lunar Gravitational-wave Antenna: mission studies and science case
P. Ajith, Pau Amaro‐Seoane, Manuel Arca Sedda, R. Arcodia, F. Badaracco, B. Banerjee, Enis Belgacem, Giovanni Benetti, S. Benetti, Alexey Bobrick, Alessandro Bonforte, Elisa Bortolas, V. Braito, M. Branchesi, Adam Burrows, E. Cappellaro, R. Della Ceca, Chandrachur Chakraborty, S. Chalathadka Subrahmanya, M. W. Coughlin, S. Covino, Andrea Derdzinski, Aayushi Doshi, M. Falanga, Stefano Foffa, Alessia Franchini, A. Frigeri, Yoshifumi Futaana, Oliver Gerberding, Kiranjyot Gill, Matteo Di Giovanni, Ines Francesca Giudice, M. Giustini, Philipp Gläser, J. Harms, J. V. van Heijningen, Francesco Iacovelli, Bradley J. Kavanagh, Taïchi Kawamura, Kenath Arun, E. Keppler, Chiaki Kobayashi, G. Komatsu, Valeriya Korol, N.V. Krishnendu, P. Kumar, F. Longo, Michele Maggiore, Michele Mancarella, Andrea Maselli, A. Mastrobuono-Battisti, Francesco Mazzarini, A. Melandri, Daniele Melini, Sabrina Ménina, G. Miniutti, Deeshani Mitra, Javier Morán-Fraile, Suvodip Mukherjee, Niccolò Muttoni, Marco Olivieri, F. Onori, M. A. Papa, F. Patat, Andrea Perali, Tsvi Piran, S. Piranomonte, Alberto Roper Pol, Masroor C. Pookkillath, R. Prasad, Vaishak Prasad, Alessandra De Rosa, Sourav Roy Chowdhury, Roberto Serafinelli, Alberto Sesana, P. Severgnini, Angela Stallone, Jacopo Tissino, Hrvoje Tkalčić, L. Tomasella, Martina Toscani, David Vartanyan, C. Vignali, Lucia Zaccarelli, M Zeoli, Luciano Zuccarello
Abstract
Abstract The Lunar Gravitational-wave Antenna (LGWA) is a proposed array of next-generation inertial sensors to monitor the response of the Moon to gravitational waves (GWs). Given the size of the Moon and the expected noise produced by the lunar seismic background, the LGWA would be able to observe GWs from about 1 mHz to 1 Hz. This would make the LGWA the missing link between space-borne detectors like LISA with peak sensitivities around a few millihertz and proposed future terrestrial detectors like Einstein Telescope or Cosmic Explorer. In this article, we provide a first comprehensive analysis of the LGWA science case including its multi-messenger aspects and lunar science with LGWA data. We also describe the scientific analyses of the Moon required to plan the LGWA mission.