No Arabic abstract
The Mock LISA Data Challenges are a program to demonstrate LISA data-analysis capabilities and to encourage their development. Each round of challenges consists of one or more datasets containing simulated instrument noise and gravitational waves from sources of undisclosed parameters. Participants analyze the datasets and report best-fit solutions for the source parameters. Here we present the results of the third challenge, issued in Apr 2008, which demonstrated the positive recovery of signals from chirping Galactic binaries, from spinning supermassive--black-hole binaries (with optimal SNRs between ~ 10 and 2000), from simultaneous extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (SNRs of 10-50), from cosmic-string-cusp bursts (SNRs of 10-100), and from a relatively loud isotropic background with Omega_gw(f) ~ 10^-11, slightly below the LISA instrument noise.
The Mock LISA Data Challenges are a programme to demonstrate and encourage the development of LISA data-analysis capabilities, tools and techniques. At the time of this workshop, three rounds of challenges had been completed, and the next was about to start. In this article we provide a critical analysis of entries to the latest completed round, Challenge 1B. The entries confirm the consolidation of a range of data-analysis techniques for Galactic and massive--black-hole binaries, and they include the first convincing examples of detection and parameter estimation of extreme--mass-ratio inspiral sources. In this article we also introduce the next round, Challenge 3. Its data sets feature more realistic waveform models (e.g., Galactic binaries may now chirp, and massive--black-hole binaries may precess due to spin interactions), as well as new source classes (bursts from cosmic strings, isotropic stochastic backgrounds) and more complicated nonsymmetric instrument noise.
The Mock LISA Data Challenges are a program to demonstrate LISA data-analysis capabilities and to encourage their development. Each round of challenges consists of several data sets containing simulated instrument noise and gravitational-wave sources of undisclosed parameters. Participants are asked to analyze the data sets and report the maximum information about source parameters. The challenges are being released in rounds of increasing complexity and realism: in this proceeding we present the results of Challenge 2, issued in January 2007, which successfully demonstrated the recovery of signals from supermassive black-hole binaries, from ~20,000 overlapping Galactic white-dwarf binaries, and from the extreme-mass-ratio inspirals of compact objects into central galactic black holes.
The LISA International Science Team Working Group on Data Analysis (LIST-WG1B) is sponsoring several rounds of mock data challenges, with the purpose of fostering development of LISA data-analysis capabilities, and of demonstrating technical readiness for the maximum science exploitation of the LISA data. The first round of challenge data sets were released at this Symposium. We describe the models and conventions (for LISA and for gravitational-wave sources) used to prepare the data sets, the file format used to encode them, and the tools and resources available to support challenge participants.
The LISA International Science Team Working Group on Data Analysis (LIST-WG1B) is sponsoring several rounds of mock data challenges, with the purposeof fostering the development of LISA data analysis capabilities, and of demonstrating technical readiness for the maximum science exploitation of the LISA data. The first round of challenge data sets were released at the Sixth LISA Symposium. We briefly describe the objectives, structure, and time-line of this programme.
The F-statistic is an optimal detection statistic for continuous gravitational waves, i.e., long-duration (quasi-)monochromatic signals with slowly-varying intrinsic frequency. This method was originally developed in the context of ground-based detectors, but it is equally applicable to LISA where many signals fall into this class of signals. We report on the application of a LIGO/GEO F-statistic code to LISA data-analysis using the long-wavelength limit (LWL), and we present results of our search for white-dwarf binary signals in the first Mock LISA Data Challenge. Somewhat surprisingly, the LWL is found to be sufficient -- even at high frequencies -- for detection of signals and their accurate localization on the sky and in frequency, while a more accurate modelling of the TDI response only seems necessary to correctly estimate the four amplitude parameters.