« A chartography of space-time: Extreme – and extremely large mass ratio inspirals and our Galactic Centre »
In this talk, I will explore the scientific insights we can gain from
observing extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs)-phenomena involving the
gravitational capture of a small compact object by a supermassive one.
The number of orbital cycles the smaller object completes around the
supermassive object is roughly proportional to their mass ratio. Each
cycle can be thought of as a snapshot of warped spacetime, and the
process will yield thousands, if not millions, of such snapshots. Using
the Galactic Center as a reference, I will introduce a new class of
gravitational wave sources characterized by extremely large mass
ratios-on the order of 1 to 100 million. These sources, referred to as
X-MRIs, are capable of achieving signal-to-noise ratios as high as 10,000.