LISA parameter estimation of supermassive black holes

Understand

We study parameter estimation of supermassive black holes in the range $10^5-10^8\Ms$ by LISA using the inspiral full post-Newtonian gravitational waveforms, and we compare the results with those arising from the commonly used restricted post-Newtonian approximation.

• The analysis shows that for observations of the last year before merger, the inclusion of the higher harmonics clearly improves the parameter estimation.
• We pay special attention to the source location errors and we study the improvement on the percentage of sources for which we could potentially identify electromagnetic counterparts.
• We also show how the additional harmonics can help to mitigate the impact of losing laser links during the mission.