Session H20 - Gravitational Radiation - Experiment.
MIXED session, Sunday morning, April 30
102A, LBCC
The detection of MACHOs in the Galactic halo has led to a great deal of speculation about the nature of the population. We examine the possibility that the MACHOs are white dwarfs of mass \sim 0.5 M_ødot, and calculate the contribution of white dwarf binaries to the gravitational wave background. The low-frequency (10^-5 Hz\, <\, f\, <\, 10^-1 Hz) gravitational wave spectrum from halo white dwarfs would be stronger than the expected Galactic disk contribution, and would dominate the stochastic background in the LISA waveband. These low-frequency gravitational wave detections will yield important clues to the nature of the dark MACHO population.