Capture of compact objects by supermassive black holes

Capture rates of compact objects were calculated using a recent solution of the Fokker-Planck equation in energy-space, including two-body resonant effects. The present study indicates that capture rates scale as ∝ Mbh−1.048 consequence of the fact that dwarf galaxies have central regions denser than luminous objects. If the mass distribution of supermassive black holes has a lower cutoff at ~1.4 × 106 M⊙ (corresponding to the lowest supermassive black hole mass), then 9 inspiral events are expected to be seen by LISA (7–8 corresponding to white dwarf captures and 1–2 to neutron star or stellar black hole captures) after 1 yr of operation. However, if the mass distribution extends down to ~2 × 105M⊙, then the number of expected events increases up to 579 (corresponding to ~274 stellar black hole captures, ~194 neutron star captures and ~111 white dwarf captures).