Speaker
Description
The upcoming space-borne gravitational wave detector Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will open a window into the milliHertz band of the gravitational wave spectrum. Among the many sources in this band is the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB), arising as an incoherent superposition of many uncorrelated gravitational wave sources. The SGWB could be of cosmological origin, carrying unique information about the physical processes that took place within the first minute after the big bang, including possible phase transitions and topological defects. LISA therefore has the potential to illuminate particle physics at very high energy scales that may be inaccessible in laboratories. I will discuss how LISA can be used to search for the SGWB, highlighting a new pipeline developed for this purpose as well as several challenges and limitations that such a search will encounter.
