Estimating galactic foreground with the population of resolved galactic binaries
astro-ph.CO, gr-qc
Submitted: 2026-04-21
Updated: 2026-09-12
Comments: 12 pages, 6 figures; version accepted for publication in JCAP
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: The stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) in the millihertz band constitutes a primary science target for future space-based interferometers.
Terminology
Abstract
The stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) in the millihertz band constitutes a primary science target for future space-based interferometers. The detection of such a signal, however, poses substantial data-processing challenges, not least due to the overwhelming contribution from numerous compact binaries in our Galaxy. Only a fraction of these binaries are sufficiently bright to be resolved as individual sources. The superposition of gravitational waves from the inspiral phases of the unresolved majority gives rise to a confusion foreground that must be accurately estimated. In this work, we model this foreground as an anisotropic SGWB and derive the variation of detector response intensity by analyzing the spatial distribution of binary systems. We further examine the distribution of resolved systems to assess whether they are representative of the total population. Finally, we perform parameter estimation to an injected stochastic background using the modeled foreground within the Taiji Data Challenge II. Our results demonstrate that a foreground description based on the population properties of resolved Galactic binaries can yield preliminarily viable estimates.
Sources
- Progress of the TianQin project
- Cosmology with space-based gravitational-wave detectors --- dark energy and primordial gravitational waves ---
- Primordial Gravitational Waves Assisted by Cosmological Scalar Perturbations
- Characterization of the stochastic signal originating from compact binaries populations as measured by LISA
- The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna: Unveiling the Millihertz Gravitational Wave Sky
- LISA Definition Study Report
- Measuring and testing dependence by correlation of distances
- HEALPix -- a Framework for High Resolution Discretization, and Fast Analysis of Data Distributed on the Sphere
- Prototype Global Analysis of LISA Data with Multiple Source Types
- Templated Anisotropic Analyses of the LISA Galactic Foreground
- Towards Realistic Detection Pipelines of Taiji: New Challenges in Data Analysis and High-Fidelity Simulations of Space-Based Gravitational Wave Antenna
- Prototype Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background Recovery in the LISA Global Fit Residual
- Observationally driven Galactic double white dwarf population for LISA
- Eryn : A multi-purpose sampler for Bayesian inference
- Isotropic stochastic gravitational wave background reconstruction for Taiji constellation
- A framework for LISA population inference
- A Foundation for Gravitational-Wave Population Inference within the LISA Global Fit
- The spectral density of astrophysical stochastic backgrounds
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