Time-dependence of the astrophysical stochastic gravitational wave background

Understand

The astrophysical stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) is mostly produced from unresolved stellar binary mergers, and the number of events at any moment of time is expected to be Poisson-distributed.

• The event rate is governed by several astrophysical processes.
• The Poisson nature leads to variation in the number of sources and this causes temporal variations in the SGWB.
• The intrinsic temporal fluctuations of the SGWB are a rich source of astrophysical information that can be explored via ongoing and future gravitational wave experiments to classify the sources of the SGWB signal.