Along their path from source to observer, gravitational waves may be gravitationally lensed by massive objects leading to distortion in the signals. Searches for these distortions amongst the observed signals from the current detector network have already been carried out, though there have as yet been no confident detections. However, predictions of the observation rate of lensing suggest...
Current parameter-estimation techniques for the coalescence of compact binaries assume just one event in the data stream. With the low detection rate of current interferometers, is has not been a problem so far, as overlapping signals are highly improbable. This will change with the next generation (3G) of detectors, like Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope, with hundreds of overlaps per...
Orbital eccentricity is a crucial physical effect to unveil the origin of compact-object binaries detected by ground- and spaced-based gravitational-wave (GW) observatories. Here, we perform for the first time a Bayesian inference study of inspiral-merger-ringdown eccentric waveforms for binary black holes with non-precessing spins using two (instead of one) eccentric parameters: ...
The last phase of a black hole merger is accompanied by a train of damped gravitational radiation known as the ringdown. It can be described linearly at late times, as a sum of discrete modes: the quasi-normal modes (QNMs) of the final Kerr black hole. As a consequence of the black hole no-hair theorem, the QNM frequencies are fully determined by the mass and spin of this black hole. Measures...
The advent of gravitational-wave astronomy is now allowing for the study of compact binary merger demographics throughout the Universe. This information can be leveraged as tools for understanding massive stars, their environments, and their evolution. One active question is the nature of compact binary formation: the environmental and chemical conditions required for black hole birth and the...
The next generation of space- and ground-based facilities promise to reveal an entirely new picture of the gravitational wave sky: thousands of galactic and extragalactic binary signals, as well as stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds (SGWBs) of unresolved astrophysical and possibly cosmological signals. Here, I will focus on one particular analysis challenge: reconstructing an SGWB from...
Once a gravitational wave signal is detected, the measurement of its source parameters is important to achieve various scientific goals. This is done through Bayesian inference, where the analysis cost increases with the model complexity and the signal duration. For typical binary black hole signals with precession and higher-order modes, one has 15 model parameters. With standard methods,...
The current and upcoming generations of gravitational wave experiments represent an exciting step forward in terms of detector sensitivity and performance. Key upgrades at the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA facilities will see the next observing run (O4) probe a spatial volume around four times larger than the previous run (O3), and design implementations for e.g. the Einstein Telescope, Cosmic...
Non-Gaussian, transient bursts of noise in gravitational wave (GW) interferometers, also known as glitches, hinder the detection and parameter estimation of short- and long-lived GW signals in the main detector strain. Glitches come in a wide range of frequency-amplitude-time morphologies and may be caused by environmental or instrumental processes, so a key step towards their mitigation is...
We introduce a novel method to generate a bank of gravitational-waveform templates of binary Black Hole (BBH) coalescences for matched-filter searches in LIGO, Virgo and Kagra data.
Unlike the standard approach, our method relies on a numerical metric approximation of the match between templates, for which we derive an expression suitable to precessing waveforms. We use the determinant of the...
The recent start of the fourth observing run of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration has reopened the hunt for gravitational-wave (GW) signals, with one compact-binary-coalescence (CBC) signal expected to be observed every few days. Among the signals that could be detected for the first time there is the stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) from the superposition of unresolvable...
Astrometric surveys can be used to constrain the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) at very low frequencies. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia mission, launched in 2013 and with a recent data release (DR3) in 2022, shows great potential for this purpose. In this talk, I will present a recent work in which we used Gaia DR3 to set constraints on the SGWB amplitude. I will also...
