The quest for a GW stochastic background with LIGO and Virgo
Tania Regimbau
A primary target for gravitational wave astronomy is the detection of a stochastic background formed by the superposition of many unresolved independent sources at different stages of the evolution of the Universe. After the first observations of a gravitational wave from the merger of two black holes (BHs) or two neutron stars (NSs), the next big milestone could be the observation of the stochastic background created by the superposition of all the unresolved compact binary coalescences (CBCs). The observation of this background will be the opportunity to study the population of NSs and BHs at high redshift, complementing individual detections at close distances. In this talk, I will give an overview of the different sources and will present the data analysis methods used in the LIGO/Virgo collaboration to measure the GW stochastic background. I will also discuss how the future generation of detectors can be used to remove the astrophysical contribution in order to observe the signal of cosmological origin.