Ten Years to LISA: New Challenges and Opportunities in Multimessenger/Multiband Science

Dates: April 1-3, 2025

This is a hybrid meeting, meaning participation can be virtual or in-person.

In-Person Location: von Karman Auditorium, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA

Workshop Overview: Motivation and Format

For the purpose of this Overview, “multimessenger astronomy” stands for “multimessenger including gravitational waves”, and “multiband” means “multiple gravitational-wave bands”. Multimessenger astronomy, in this sense, began with a bang with the LIGO-Virgo detection of GWs from the merger of two neutron stars, GW170817, an event that was soon observed in most EM bands. While there was an expectation in the field that NS mergers powered some short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs) and models of their subsequent radioactive decay (kilonova) existed, confirmation of these theories occurred only from GW170817. Details of these events, like the delay between the GW and GRB signals and the GRB strength, however, led to new insights into their pre-merger environments and the dependence on viewing angle of the jet’s appearance.

Astrophysicists’ predictions of the EM signals that will accompany LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) events may be even less advanced than sGRB models prior to GW170817 and share a lack of confirming evidence. This workshop is premised on the viewpoint that this relative ignorance represents an opportunity, or, really, several opportunities. There is important work to be done i) using past and upcoming observations (both EM and GW) to constrain event rates and search for the signatures of LISA-type events before LISA turns on; and ii) using astrophysical models to predict the multimessenger and multiband signals that will accompany LISA signals.

We have about ten years to work on this before LISA and Nature start to give us some of the answers. It is our belief that such work done before LISA starts taking data will almost surely help us maximize the science we extract. (And we expect that will be true even if most of our predictions are not ultimately borne out by observations.)

With the above as motivation, this workshop will give overviews of the sorts of EM & GW observations that we expect to be made over the next 10+ years and how they relate to LISA. And it will suggest LISA multimessenger/multiband science investigations that could be started now. Our main goal is to help stimulate new, important work in these areas.

The format for the workshop is as follows. We have divided our subject into eight topics. Over the course of the three-day workshop, there will be eight sessions: one devoted to each topic. For each session, we have found a topical expert who has agreed to chair that session. The Session Chairs will build their sessions using some combination of invited talks and talks contributed via this website. It will be up to each Session Chair to construct their session as they think best.

This a hybrid workshop, meaning participation can be either in-person or online. There is zero registration fee for either in-person or remote attendance. However, we recommend that you attend in person, if you can, to benefit from the side discussions that are important part of any workshop. We plan to limit talks to about six hours per day, to leave plenty of time for such side discussions.

Important Dates:

Monday, December 23, 2025 - Registration open
Tuesday, February 4, 2025 - Deadline for abstract submission for presentations and posters
Monday, February 24, 2025 - Registration closes for attendees from these Designated Countries who are attending in person
Monday, March 10, 2025 - Registration closes
Friday, March 28, 2025 - Deadline for submission of talks

For those of you who plan to participate in-person (and who don’t already have a NASA badge), JPL administrators will be obtaining visitor badges for you, and will be reaching out to you individually with next steps.

You can also view a list of our registered participants here.

Local Organizing Committee (LOC):

Curt Cutler (Chair, JPL), Charles Lawrence (JPL), Graca Rocha (JPL), Jackie Muniz (JPL)

Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC):

Katerina Chatziioannou (Caltech), Curt Cutler (JPL), Michele Vallisneri (JPL), Graca Rocha (JPL), Scott Noble (GSFC), Kelly Holley-Bockelmann (Vanderbilt Univ.), Tyson Littenberg (MSFC), Samaya Nissanke (Univ. of Amsterdam), Stephen Taylor (Vanderbilt Univ.), Mansi Kasliwal (Caltech)

For any questions please contact multilisa_oc@jpl.nasa.gov.

Workshop Sessions

Gravitational-Wave Telescopes and Observations - From now to 2040 (Chair: David Shoemaker, MIT)
EM Telescopes and Observations - From now to 2040 (Chair: Daniel Stern, JPL)
The Population of LISA MBHBs: Inference from Current & Future Observations (Chair: Priyamvada Natarajan, Yale Univ.)
The Population of LISA MBHBs: What we have learned from simulations (Chair: Alberto Sesana, Univ. of Milano-Bicocca)
EM Counterparts to GW Signals from MBHBs (Chair: Lucio Mayer, Univ. of Zurich)
Galactic Binaries: (Chair: Kevin Burdge, MIT)
EMRIs (Chair: Pau Amaro-Seoane, Universitat Politècnica de València)
Joint LISA + Ground-Based Observations of Stellar-Mass Binaries (Chair: Davide Gerosa, Univ. of Milano-Bicocca)

Workshop Agenda

Workshop Presentations

Ten Years to LISA: New Challenges and Opportunities in Multimessenger/Multiband Science

You can also view a list of our registered participants here.

Workshop Sessions

Workshop Agenda

Workshop Presentations

Day 1 Presentations

Day 2 Presentations

Day 3 Presentations