SAGE: finding IMBH in the black hole desert

SAGE (SagnAc interferometer for Gravitational wavE) is a project for a space observatory based on multiple 12-U CubeSats in geosynchronous orbit. The objective is a fast track mission which would fill the observational gap between LISA and ground based observatories. With albeit a lower sensitivity, it would allow early investigation of the nature and event rate of intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) mergers, constraining our understanding of the universe formation by probing the building up of IMBH up to supermassive black holes. Technically, the CubeSats would create a triangular Sagnac interferometer with 140.000km roundtrip arm length, optimized to be sensitive to gravitational waves at frequencies between 10mHz and 2Hz. The nature of the Sagnac measurement makes it almost insensitive to position error, enabling the use of spacecrafts in ballistic trajectories. The light source and recombination units of the interferometer are based on compact fibered technologies without bulk optics. A peak sensitivity of 23 pm/sqrt(Hz) is expected at 1Hz assuming a 200mW internal laser source and 10-centimeter diameter apertures. Because of the absence of a test mass, the main limitation would come from the non-gravitational forces applied on the spacecrafts. However, conditionally upon our ability to partially post-process the effect of solar wind and solar pressure, SAGE would allow detection of gravitational waves with strains as low as a few 1e-19 within the 0.1 to 1Hz range. Averaged over the entire sky, and including the antenna gain of the Sagnac interferometer, the SAGE observatory would sense equal mass black hole mergers in the 1e4 to 1e6 solar masses range up to a luminosity distance of 800Mpc. Additionally, coalescence of stellar black holes (10Msun) around SMBH (IMBH) forming extreme (intermediate) mass ratio inspirals could be detected within a sphere of radius 200Mpc.