The Milky Way's bar structural properties from gravitational waves

Understand

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will enable Galactic gravitational wave (GW) astronomy by individually resolving $ > 10^4$ signals from double white dwarf (DWD) binaries throughout the Milky Way.

• In this work we assess for the first time the potential of LISA data to map the Galactic stellar bar and spiral arms, since GWs are unaffected by stellar crowding and dust extinction unlike optical observations of the bulge region.
• To achieve this goal we combine a realistic population of Galactic DWDs with a high-resolution N-Body simulation a galaxy in good agreement with the Milky Way.
• We then model GW signals from our synthetic DWD population and reconstruct the structure of the simulated Galaxy from mock LISA observations.