Gravitational waves have opened a completely new way of exploring the universe—but we’ve only just scratched the surface. With the upcoming LISA mission, led by the European Space Agency, we’ll be able to ‘hear’ signals from some of the most extreme events in the cosmos, including black holes the size of our Sun spiraling into supermassive black holes millions of times larger.
These systems, known as EMRIs (Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals), are rich in information but incredibly hard to detect without precise models to guide the search. Much of the work of the group is aimed at developing accurate models of the signals from EMRIs, helping LISA unlock discoveries that are currently out of reach.