Multiband gravitational wave observations of stellar binary black holes at the low to middle and high frequencies

Abstract

ABSTRACT The ground-based gravitational wave (GW) observatories discover a population of merging stellar binary black holes (BBHs), which are promising targets for multiband observations by the low-, middle-, and high-frequency GW detectors. In this paper, we investigate the multiband GW detections of BBHs and demonstrate the advantages of such observations in improving the localization and parameter estimates of the sources. We generate mock samples of BBHs by considering different formation models as well as the merger rate density constrained by the current observations (GWTC-3). We specifically consider the astrodynamical middle-frequency interferometer GW observatory (AMIGO) in the middle-frequency band and estimate that it may detect 21–91 BBHs with signal-to-noise ratio ϱ ≥ 8 in a 4-yr observation period. The multiband observations by the low-frequency detectors [Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and Taiji] and AMIGO may detect 5–33 BBHs with ϱLT ≥ 5 and ϱAMI ≥ 5, which can evolve to the high-frequency band within 4 yr and can be detected by the Cosmic Explorer (CE) and Einstein Telescope (ET). The joint observations of LISA-Taiji-AMIGO-ET-CE may localize the majority of the detectable BBHs in sky areas of 7 × 10−7 to 2 × 10−3 deg2, which is improved by a factor of ∼120, ∼2.4 × 105, ∼1.8 × 104, or ∼1.2 × 104, comparing with those by only adopting CE-ET, AMIGO, LISA-Taiji, or LISA-Taiji-AMIGO. These joint observations can also lead to an improvement of the measurement precision of the chirp mass (symmetric mass ratio) by a factor of ∼5.5 × 104 (33), ∼16 (8), ∼120 (90), or ∼5 (5), comparing with those by CE-ET, AMIGO, LISA-Taiji, or LISA-Taiji-AMIGO.