Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
In this episode of #LECSTalks we feature Francisco Duque, postdoc the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potdsam, who recently gave LISA Early Career Scientists a talk titled "Environmental Effects in Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals (EMRIs)".
🎤 Tell us something about yourself
I am a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potdsam after completing my Ph.D. at Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, under the supervision of Prof. Vitor Cardoso. I spend most of my time understanding how astrophysical environments (e.g., accretion disks) affect the evolution of binary systems & what are the best strategies to detect these effects with #LISAMission. In my (scarce) free time, I try to feed my eclectic passion for music, which goes from Opera/Classic/Jazz to Ambient/Hip-Hop/House music (I play various string instruments and enjoy a successful DJ residency in my living room).
🎤 What can you tell us about Environmental Effects in EMRIs?
Many LISA sources can form in non-vacuum environments, like accretion disks or dense dark-matter configurations.
The interaction with these astrophysical structures will affect the formation and evolution of compact binaries, leading to potential smoking guns in their waveform. Many LISA sources can form in non-vacuum environments, like accretion disks or dense dark-matter configurations.
The interaction with these astrophysical structures will affect the formation and evolution of compact binaries, leading to potential smoking guns in their waveform. We focused on the case of a small compact body doing an eccentric inspiral around a supermassive black hole — these systems are called extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) — while immersed in an Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) disk.
Depending on the EMRI's eccentricity, it will be moving subsonically or supersonically with respect to the disk gas flow, which alters the nature of the binary-disk interaction and its effect on the EMRI’s dynamics (& subsquently on the gravitational waveform). We also identified some of the major challenges to observing these smoking guns in the context of the LISA Global Fit.
#LECSTalks
In this episode of #LECSTalks we feature Francisco Duque, postdoc the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potdsam, who recently gave LISA Early Career Scientists a talk titled "Environmental Effects in Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals (EMRIs)".
🎤 Tell us something about yourself
I am a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potdsam after completing my Ph.D. at Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, under the supervision of Prof. Vitor Cardoso. I spend most of my time understanding how astrophysical environments (e.g., accretion disks) affect the evolution of binary systems & what are the best strategies to detect these effects with #LISAMission. In my (scarce) free time, I try to feed my eclectic passion for music, which goes from Opera/Classic/Jazz to Ambient/Hip-Hop/House music (I play various string instruments and enjoy a successful DJ residency in my living room).
🎤 What can you tell us about Environmental Effects in EMRIs?
Many LISA sources can form in non-vacuum environments, like accretion disks or dense dark-matter configurations.
The interaction with these astrophysical structures will affect the formation and evolution of compact binaries, leading to potential smoking guns in their waveform. Many LISA sources can form in non-vacuum environments, like accretion disks or dense dark-matter configurations.
The interaction with these astrophysical structures will affect the formation and evolution of compact binaries, leading to potential smoking guns in their waveform. We focused on the case of a small compact body doing an eccentric inspiral around a supermassive black hole — these systems are called extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) — while immersed in an Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) disk.
Depending on the EMRI's eccentricity, it will be moving subsonically or supersonically with respect to the disk gas flow, which alters the nature of the binary-disk interaction and its effect on the EMRI’s dynamics (& subsquently on the gravitational waveform). We also identified some of the major challenges to observing these smoking guns in the context of the LISA Global Fit.
#LECSTalks
