OUP accepted manuscript

Abstract

Gravitational wave (GW) radiations from numerous cosmic stellar-compact-binaries form a stochastic GW background (GWB), which is expected to be detected by ground and space GW detectors in future. Theoretical predictions of this GWB were mostly obtained by assuming either circular binaries and/or a specific channel for binary formation, which may have some uncertainties. In this paper, we estimate the GWB and its spectrum by using simple models for the formation of both stellar mass binary black holes (sBBHs) and binary neutron stars (BNSs). We consider that the dynamically originated sBBHs have relatively larger masses and higher eccentricities compared with those from field binary stars and its possible effect on the GWB spectrum. We find that the GWB spectrum may have a turnover in the low-frequency (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna; LISA) band and may be better described by a broken double power-law than a single power-law with the unique index $2/3$, and the low-frequency slope depends on the significance of the dynamically originated sBBHs with high eccentricities. We further generate mock samples of sBBHs and BNSs, and simulate the mock GWB strain in the time domain. We find that GWB can be detected with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) $\gtrsim274/255/21$ by LISA/Taiji/TianQin over $5$-years' observation and $\gtrsim3$ by LIGO over $2$-years' observation. Furthermore, we estimate that the number of sBBHs that may be detected by LISA/Taiji/TianQin individually with SNR $\gtrsim8$ is $\sim5$-$221$/$7$-$365$/$3$-$223$ over $5$-years' observation.