Prospects of gravitational-waves detections from common-envelope evolution with LISA

Understand

Understanding common envelope (CE) evolution is an outstanding problem in binary evolution.

• Although the CE phase is not driven by gravitational-wave (GW) emission, the in-spiraling binary emits GWs that passively trace the CE dynamics.
• Detecting this GW signal would provide direct insight into the gas-driven physics.
• Even a non-detection might offer invaluable constraints.