Speaker
Description
The LISA stochastic signal from stellar mass black holes may be detectable. These binaries can be significantly affected by an astrophysical environment in their early inspiral. In this talk, I will describe how the presence of an astrophysical environment can be inferred from the stochastic signal produced by unresolved stellar mass black holes in the LISA band. I will first provide an overview of some environmental effects and then focus on gas-induced dynamical friction and accretion. Additionally, I will discuss how eccentricity affects the spectrum and can be used as an indirect probe of the astrophysical formation of such binaries. Further, when using vacuum quasi-circular models for the stochastic signal, there can be significant biases in the parameter estimation, which motivates the need to parametrically model these effects.