The Lunar Gravitational-wave Antenna: Mission Studies and Science Case

Understand

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.