No Arabic abstract
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will detect thousands of gravitational wave sources. Many of these sources will be overlapping in the sense that their signals will have a non-zero cross-correlation. Such overlaps lead to source confusion, which adversely affects how well we can extract information about the individual sources. Here we study how source confusion impacts parameter estimation for galactic compact binaries, with emphasis on the effects of the number of overlaping sources, the time of observation, the gravitational wave frequencies of the sources, and the degree of the signal correlations. Our main findings are that the parameter resolution decays exponentially with the number of overlapping sources, and super-exponentially with the degree of cross-correlation. We also find that an extended mission lifetime is key to disentangling the source confusion as the parameter resolution for overlapping sources improves much faster than the usual square root of the observation time.
Data analysis for the proposed Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be complicated by the huge number of sources in the LISA band. Throughout much of the band, galactic white dwarf binaries (GWDBs) are sufficiently dense in frequency space that it will be impossible to resolve most of them, and confusion noise from the unresolved Galactic binaries will dominate over instrumental noise in determining LISAs sensitivity to other sources in that band. Confusion noise from unresolved extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) could also contribute significantly to LISAs total noise curve. To date, estimates of the effect of LISAs confusion noise on matched-filter searches and their detection thresholds have generally approximated the noise as Gaussian, based on the Central Limit Theorem. However in matched-filter searches, the appropriate detection threshold for a given class of signals may be located rather far out on the tail of the signal-to-noise probability distribution, where a priori it is unclear whether the Gaussian approximation is reliable. Using the Edgeworth expansion and the theory of large deviations, we investigate the probability distribution of the usual matched-filter detection statistic, far out on the tail of the distribution. We apply these tools to four somewhat idealiz
The LTP (LISA Testflight Package), to be flown aboard the ESA / NASA LISA Pathfinder mission, aims to demonstrate drag-free control for LISA test masses with acceleration noise below 30 fm/s^2/Hz^1/2 from 1-30 mHz. This paper describes the LTP measurement of random, position independent forces acting on the test masses. In addition to putting an overall upper limit for all source of random force noise, LTP will measure the conversion of several key disturbances into acceleration noise and thus allow a more detailed characterization of the drag-free performance to be expected for LISA.
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will observe gravitational radiation in the milliHertz band by measuring picometer-level fluctuations in the distance between drag-free proof masses over baselines of approximately five million kilometers. The measurement over each baseline will be divided into three parts: two short-arm measurements between the proof masses and a fiducial point on their respective spacecraft, and a long-arm measurement between fiducial points on separate spacecraft. This work focuses on the technical challenges associated with these long-arm measurements and the techniques that have been developed to overcome them.
The space-borne gravitational wave (GW) detectors, LISA and TAIJI, are planned to be launched in the 2030s. The dual detectors with comparable sensitivities will form a network observing GW with significant advantages. In this work, we investigate the three possible LISA-TAIJI networks for the different location and orientation compositions of LISA orbit ($+60^circ$ inclination and trailing the Earth by $20^circ$) and alternative TAIJI orbit configurations including TAIJIp ($+60^circ$ inclination and leading the Earth by $20^circ$), TAIJIc ($+60^circ$ inclination and co-located with LISA), TAIJIm ($-60^circ$ inclination and leading the Earth by $20^circ$). In the three LISA-TAIJI configurations, the LISA-TAIJIm network shows the best performance on the sky localization and polarization determination for the massive binary system due to their better complementary antenna pattern, and LISA-TAIJIc could achieve the best cross-correlation and observe the stochastic GW background with an optimal sensitivity.
We present a comprehensive analysis for the determination of the confusion levels for the current and the next generation of far-infrared surveys assuming three different cosmological evolutionary scenarios. We include an extensive model for diffuse emission from infrared cirrus in order to derive absolute sensitivity levels taking into account the source confusion noise due to point sources, the sky confusion noise due to the diffuse emission, and instrumental noise. We use our derived sensitivities to suggest best survey strategies for the current and the future far-infrared space missions Spitzer, AKARI (ASTRO-F), Herschel, and SPICA. We discuss whether the theoretical estimates are realistic and the competing necessities of reliability and completeness. We find the best estimator for the representation of the source confusion and produce predictions for the source confusion using far-infrared source count models. From these confusion limits considering both source and sky confusions, we obtain the optimal, confusion limited redshift distribution for each mission. Finally, we predict the Cosmic Far-Infrared Background (CFIRB) which includes information about the number and distribution of the contributing sources.