Gravitational-wave astronomy with an uncertain noise power spectral density

Understand

In order to extract information about the properties of compact binaries, we must estimate the noise power spectral density of gravitational-wave data, which depends on the properties of the gravitational-wave detector.

• In practice, it is not possible to know this perfectly, only to estimate it from the data.
• Multiple estimation methods are commonly used and each has a corresponding statistical uncertainty.
• However, this uncertainty is widely ignored when measuring the physical parameters describing compact binary coalescences, and the appropriate likelihoods which account for the uncertainty are not well known.