Scientific Seminars

Flashes of X-ray light as companion signals of LISA massive black hole coalescences

Monica Colpi
Universita' degli Studi Milano Bicocca

2021-05-11    10:30    Brera - Sala virtuale https://meet.google.com/imu-ibbn-cct

n this talk I will address how Athena joining LISA in concurrent observations of massive black hole mergers will provide breakthroughs on the physics of accretion in time varying spacetimes. I will survey current theoretical models on the behavior of matter in the violently changing spacetime of a black hole merger, and then describe the localization capabilities of LISA "on the fly". Only for very nearby coalescences of binary black holes of million suns it will be possible to localize the source within the Athen field of view hours before merging, allowing us to detect for the first time the X-ray light during the inspiral phase. I will show that Athena is optimal to search for post-merger signatures associated to the rebrightening of the disc in joint observations of mergers out to redshift ~3.