Detection pipeline for Galactic binaries in LISA data

Abstract

The Galaxy is suspected to contain hundreds of millions of binary white dwarf systems, a large fraction of which will have sufficiently small orbital periods to emit gravitational radiation in band for space-based gravitational wave detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). LISA's main science goal is the detection of cosmological events (supermassive black hole mergers, etc.) however the gravitational signal from the galaxy will be the dominant contribution to the data---including instrumental noise---over approximately two decades in frequency. The catalog of detectable binary systems will serve as an unparalleled means of studying the Galaxy. Furthermore, to maximize the scientific return from the mission, the data must be cleansed of the galactic foreground. We will present an algorithm that can accurately resolve and subtract $\ensuremath{\gtrsim}10\text{ }000$ of these sources from simulated data supplied by the Mock LISA Data Challenge Task Force. Using the time evolution of the gravitational wave frequency, we will reconstruct the position of the recovered binaries and show how LISA will sample the entire compact binary population in the Galaxy.