Evaluating the gravitational wave detectability of globular clusters and the Magellanic Clouds for LISA

¹ Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
² Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Einsteinweg 55, 2333 CC, Leiden, The Netherlands
³ Department of Physics, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019 Auckland, New Zealand
⁴ SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Niels Bohrweg 4, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands
⁵ Institute of Astronomy, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

^★ Corresponding author; wouter.vanzeist@astro.ru.nl

Received: 7 June 2024
Accepted: 17 October 2024

Abstract

We used the stellar evolution code BPASS and the gravitational wave (GW) simulation code LEGWORK to simulate populations of compact binaries that may be detected by the future space-based GW detector LISA. Specifically, we simulate the Magellanic Clouds and binary populations mimicking several globular clusters, neglecting dynamical effects. We find that a handful of sources should be detectable in each of the Magellanic Clouds, but for globular clusters the amount of detectable sources will likely be less than one each. We compared our results to earlier research and find that our predicted numbers are several dozen times lower than both the results from calculations that used the stellar evolution code BSE and take dynamical effects into account, and results from calculations that used the stellar evolution code SEBA for the Magellanic Clouds. Earlier research that compared BPASS models for GW sources in the Galactic disk with BSE models found a similarly sized discrepancy. We determine that this discrepancy is caused by differences between the stellar evolution codes, particularly in the treatment of mass transfer and common-envelope events in binaries: in BPASS mass transfer is more likely to be stable and tends to lead to less orbital shrinkage in the common-envelope phase than in other codes. This difference results in fewer compact binaries with periods short enough to be detected by LISA existing in the BPASS population. For globular clusters, we conclude that the impact of dynamical effects is uncertain based on the literature, but the differences in stellar evolution have an effect of a factor of 20 to 40 on the number of detectable binaries.