The Stochastic GW Background: What it is and current research
Taylor Knapp, TAPIR, SXS, LIGO / Caltech
Since 2015, we have detected gravitational waves from over a hundred compact binary coalescences (CBCs) using the LIGO interferometers. These CBCS include binary black holes, binary neutron stars, and black hole-neutron star mergers. Once we subtract these louder CBC foreground signals from the LIGO interferometer data, we are left with a background. This background, referred to as the stochastic gravitational wave background (GWB), is the assumed isotropic, stationary, and unpolarized superposition of quieter sources. Some proposed components of the GWB include white dwarf binaries, supermassive binaries, cosmic strings, and first order phase transitions. The better we can resolve and understand the GWB, the more information we can extract about the universe and stellar populations. I will discuss the current state of research on the GWB and what we anticipate seeing in next generation detectors such as Pulsar Timing Array, LISA, Cosmic Explorer, and Einstein Telescope. I will also touch on my own research, which exemplifies how resolving the GWB is a statistical analysis problem.
Host: Kane