Astrophysical gravitational wave background: from theoretical modelling to detection prospects

IAP weekly specialised seminars / 30 September 2022

Giulia Cusin (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France)

When looking at a population of astrophysical gravitational wave sources we can either decide to focus on those sources that are particularly bright, and build a catalogue, or characterise collectively the superposition of all signals from all sources from the onset of stellar activity until today. This stochastic background of gravitational radiation is an interesting observable as it can allow us to extract astrophysical information that cannot be extracted from the study of individual events. In this talk, I will give an overview of different astrophysical populations expected to generate a stochastic background in the frequency band of current and future gravitational wave detectors. I will then review the state of the art of background modeling and illustrate future detection prospects.