About the project
The detection of gravitational waves (GWs) has been a huge breakthrough in physics. Today's GW detectors are located on Earth, but the next big milestone will be a space-based GW observatory called "LISA". In this project, we will study a crucial, but overlooked, GW source population for LISA: contact binaries.
The detection of gravitational waves (GWs) from merging black holes and neutron stars has been one of the greatest breakthroughs in (astro)physics in recent years. The next milestone in this field will be the launch of the space-based LISA mission. LISA's sensitivity to low-frequency GWs will allow it to detect (for the first time) close binary stars in the Milky Way.
In preparation for LISA, huge effort is currently being dedicated to estimating the number and properties of these binary systems. However, essentially all of this effort has so far been dedicated to compact binaries, such as systems in which one of both components are black holes, neutron stars or white dwarfs. What has been overlooked is the one important population of close binaries in which neither component is compact: the contact binaries. These are composed of "normal" stars that have been forced so close together that they share a single dumbbell-shaped envelope.
In this project, you'll construct the most up-to-date compilation of contact binaries, determine the number of these systems in the Milky Way and carry out simulations to predict the gravitational wave signals they will produce in LISA.
