There are two possible approaches to describe a population of astrophysical gravitational wave (GW) sources: one can focus on high signal-to-noise sources that can be detected individually, and build a catalogue. Alternatively, one can take a background-approach and study the incoherent superposition of GW signals emitted by the entire population (both resolved and unresolved sources) from the onset of stellar activity until today. A detailed description of signals from resolvable sources, and of the properties of a stochastic background, including propagation effects, is crucial to extract accurate information on the underlying source population. Moreover, these two observables contain complementary astrophysical information and, once combined, they can provide insight on the properties of a faint and distant sub-population that cannot be accessed with any other means of observation. In my talk I will outline the differences and the complementarity of these two approaches, from the point of view of observations and of theoretical modeling, and stress a few caveats to be kept in mind when deriving predictions to be compared with (present and future) datasets.
Event organized by CEICO, Central European Institute for Cosmology and Fundamental Physics.
Please contact Roberto Oliveri or Gizem Sengor for further info.