Niayesh Afshordi, Sarp Akçay, Pau Amaro‐Seoane, Andrea Antonelli, Josu C. Aurrekoetxea, Leor Barack, Enrico Barausse, Robert Benkel, Laura Bernard, Sebastiano Bernuzzi, Emanuele Berti, Matteo Bonetti, Béatrice Bonga, Gabriele Bozzola, Richard Brito, Alessandra Buonanno, Alejandro Cárdenas-Avendaño, Marc Casals, David Chernoff, Alvin J. K. Chua, Katy Clough, M. Colleoni, Geoffrey Compère, Mekhi Dhesi, Adrien Druart, Leanne Durkan, Guillaume Faye, Deborah Ferguson, Scott E. Field, W. Gabella, J. García-Bellido, Miguel Gracia-Linares, Davide Gerosa, Stephen Green, M. Haney, Mark Hannam, Anna Heffernan, Tanja Hinderer, Thomas Helfer, Scott A. Hughes, S. Husa, Soichiro Isoyama, Michael L. Katz, Chris Kavanagh, Gaurav Khanna, Larry Kidder, Valeriya Korol, Lorenzo Küchler, Pablo Laguna, François Larrouturou, Alexandre Le Tiec, Benjamin Leather, Eugene A. Lim, Hyun Lim, Tyson B. Littenberg, Oliver Long, Carlos O. Lousto, Geoffrey Lovelace, Georgios Lukes-Gerakopoulos, Philip Lynch, Rodrigo Panosso Macedo, C. Markakis, Elisa Maggio, Ilya Mandel, Andrea Maselli, Josh Mathews, Pierre Mourier, David Neilsen, A. Nagar, David A. Nichols, Jan Novák, Maria Okounkova, Richard O’Shaughnessy, Naritaka Oshita, Conor O’Toole, Zhen Pan, Paolo Pani, G Pappas, Vasileios Paschalidis, Harald Pfeiffer, Lorenzo Pompili, Adam Pound, G. Pratten, Hannes R. Rüter, Milton Ruiz, Zeyd Sam, Laura Sberna, S. M. Shapiro, Deirdre Shoemaker, Carlos F. Sopuerta, Andrew Spiers, Hari Sundar, Nicola Tamanini, Jonathan E. Thompson, Alexandre Toubiana, Antonios Tsokaros, Samuel D. Upton, Maarten van de Meent, Daniele Vernieri, Jeremy M. Wachter
Abstract LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, will usher in a new era in gravitational-wave astronomy. As the first anticipated space-based gravitational-wave detector, it will expand our view to the millihertz gravitational-wave sky, where a spectacular variety of interesting new sources abound: from millions of ultra-compact binaries in our Galaxy, to mergers of massive black holes at cosmological distances; from the early inspirals of stellar-mass black holes that will ultimately venture into the ground-based detectors’ view to the death spiral of compact objects into massive black holes, and many sources in between. Central to realising LISA’s discovery potential are waveform models, the theoretical and phenomenological predictions of the pattern of gravitational waves that these sources emit. This White Paper is presented on behalf of the Waveform Working Group for the LISA Consortium. It provides a review of the current state of waveform models for LISA sources, and describes the significant challenges that must yet be overcome.