A Bayesian analysis for the anisotropies in the stochastic gravitational wave background with LISA

Abstract

The LISA milliHertz frequency band will witness a rich symphony of gravitational wave signals, with sources ranging from galactic white dwarf binaries to extreme mass ratio inspirals. Many of the weaker signals from these sources overlap and incoherently add with each other producing a stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB). While the frequency content of the SGWB is governed by the dynamics of the binary inspirals, its angular dependence will be modulated by the distribution of the sources across the sky. The anisotropy will be particularly strong for galactic binaries which trace the shape of the Milky Way on the sky. In addition, a cosmological SGWB is also possible whose power spectrum, if detected, will be a unique probe of early universe physics. In this talk we will demonstrate Bayesian techniques to detect and probe the anisotropy of a SGWB with LISA. We use a novel decomposition based on Clebsch-Gordan coefficients to show how a spherical harmonic basis can be used to study the anisotropies, while constraining the power in all spatial directions to be non-negative. We also demonstrate an end-to-end pipeline for analysis of anisotropic SGWB with LISA, using a series of data simulations and analyses rooted in Bayesian inference.

Date
Sep 2, 2020 12:00 AM
Event
LISA Symposium, 2020
Location
Remote talk

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