Fast and accurate method to simulate the LISA response to Galactic binaries


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Date

2024-10-15

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Journal Article

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Abstract

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a space-based observatory for gravitational waves currently under development. It will comprise three spacecraft that orbit the Sun, forming a nearly equilateral triangle. The vast majority of the sources contributing to the LISA measurements will be galactic binaries. Due to their large number, the LISA measurements of galactic binaries need to be simulated accurately and rapidly for various testing and processing purposes. For a rapid forward simulation, the computation of the measurements is split such that parts are performed in the time and frequency domains, respectively. We show how an inaccurate implementation of this method can lead to errors when simulating the measurements for a finite time of observation. We modify the forward simulation method accordingly and introduce a technique to further accelerate the computation. Finally, real LISA measurements will contain large noise components. These are reduced in a postprocessing step, which is commonly included in the forward simulation. This noise-reduction procedure involves delaying the LISA measurements by multiples of the time-varying LISA arm lengths. For an efficient evaluation of the delays, it is often inaccurately assumed that the LISA arm lengths are constant. We show that the time variations of the LISA arm lengths can be accounted for without significantly increasing the computational cost. The presented numerical method is suitable to be executed on GPUs. In numerical tests, we show that the LISA measurements of millions of galactic binaries can be simulated accurately within a few seconds.

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published

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Volume

110 (8)

Pages / Article No.

82001

Publisher

American Physical Society

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03953 - Robertsson, Johan / Robertsson, Johan check_circle

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185051 - Development and Application of Seismological Techniques for the Analysis of Gravitational Waves Signals in LISA (SNF)

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