0000000000411764
AUTHOR
Enrique García-berro
Gravitational Waves from the Merging of White Dwarfs
Binary white dwarfs emit gravitational waves with frequencies of up to a few mHz. As a consequence of the loss of angular momentum both components gradually approach and the gravitational waves emitted by the system increase both in amplitude and frequency (it is said that they chirp). In fact, the chirp of the galactic white dwarf binary population is expected to be the dominant source of noise at low frequencies. A fraction of these binaries, those separated by a distance smaller than roughly three solar radii, will eventually merge in a time shorter than a Hubble time. It is expected that during the merging they will emit gravitational waves transporting extremely valuable information ab…
The Large Observatory For x-ray Timing
The Large Observatory For x-ray Timing (LOFT) was studied within ESA M3 Cosmic Vision framework and participated in the final down-selection for a launch slot in 2022-2024. Thanks to the unprecedented combination of effective area and spectral resolution of its main instrument, LOFT will study the behaviour of matter under extreme conditions, such as the strong gravitational field in the innermost regions of accretion flows close to black holes and neutron stars, and the supra-nuclear densities in the interior of neutron stars. The science payload is based on a Large Area Detector (LAD, 10 m 2 effective area, 2-30 keV, 240 eV spectral resolution, 1 deg collimated field of view) and a WideFi…