Abstract
The recent Advanced LIGO detection of gravitational waves from the binary black hole GW150914 suggests there exists a large population of merging binary black holes in the Universe. Although most are too distant to be individually resolved by advanced detectors, the superposition of gravitational waves from many unresolvable binaries is expected to create an astrophysical stochastic background. Recent results from the LIGO and Virgo collaborations show that this astrophysical background is within reach of Advanced LIGO. In principle, the binary black hole background encodes interesting astrophysical properties, such as the mass distribution and redshift distribution of distant binaries. However, we show that this information will be difficult to extract with the current configuration of advanced detectors (and using current data analysis tools). Additionally, the binary black hole background also constitutes a foreground that limits the ability of advanced detectors to observe other interesting stochastic background signals, for example from cosmic strings or phase transitions in the early Universe. We quantify this effect.
Highlights
The first direct detection of gravitational waves was recently announced by the Advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and Virgo Collaborations [1,2,3,4]
III, we find that, while second-generation gravitational-wave detectors may successfully measure the amplitude of the stochastic background, it is difficult to further distinguish between different models for the binary black hole background
The stochastic background encodes astrophysical information about a population of black hole binaries that is distinct from the local population visible to CBC searches
Summary
The first direct detection of gravitational waves was recently announced by the Advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and Virgo Collaborations [1,2,3,4]. The astrophysical stochastic gravitational-wave background, arising from all coalescing binary black holes too distant to individually resolve [9,10,11,12,13,14], is potentially within reach of advanced detectors. Given this exciting possibility, we address three key questions concerning the future prospects for gravitational-wave science with stochastic backgrounds: First, how does the information contained in the stochastic signal compare to what we learn from resolvable binaries in the nearby Universe? IV, we show that the BBH background acts as a limiting foreground, significantly decreasing our sensitivity to other backgrounds of interest
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