Black holes (BHs) cover a wide range of mass: from the stellar BH binaries detected with LIGO / Virgo to the massive BHs residing at the center of galaxies. Both these populations will be detectable in future by LISA at low-frequency. In this talk, I will provide a general overview of the current detections from LIGO / Virgo, describing the current state-of-the-art and I will highlight the potential of the LISA mission.
I'll then present my past and current research: in particular, I will focus on massive BH binaries (MBHBs) and on LISA's ability to constrain binary parameters during the inspiral or if the merger and ringdown is taken into account. In current astrophysical models, MBHBs are expected to potentially merge in a gas-rich environment, leading to the emission of an electromagnetic (EM) counterpart together with the GW signal. Exploiting the GW information, it's possible to localize the binary with sufficiently accuracy in the sky and inform the EM telescopes.
Moreover, GWs are standard sirens as they bring direct information about the luminosity distance of the source. If an EM counterpart is detected, the additional information from redshift can be exploited to constrain cosmology parameters with great accuracy. I'll provide a brief review of the current literature and describe the work conducted at APC in these months.