CLASS_ GWB: robust modeling of the astrophysical gravitational wave background anisotropies

Gravitational radiation offers a unique possibility to study the large-scale struc-ture of the Universe, gravitational wave sources and propagation in a completely novel way. Given that gravitational wave maps contain a wealth of astrophysical and cosmological in-formation, interpreting this signal requires a non-trivial multidisciplinary approach. In this work we present the complete computation of the signal produced by compact object merg-ers accounting for a detailed modelling of the astrophysical sources and for cosmological perturbations. We develop the CLASS_GWB code, which allows for the computation of the anisotropies of the astrophysical gravitational wave background, accounting for source and detector properties, as well as effects of gravitational wave propagation. We apply our nu-merical tools to robustly compute the angular power spectrum of the anisotropies of the gravitational wave background generated by astrophysical sources in the LIGO-Virgo fre-quency band. The end-to-end theoretical framework we present can be easily applied to different sources and detectors in other frequency bands. Moreover, the same numerical tools can be used to compute the anisotropies of gravitational wave maps of the sky made using resolved events.

Automated summary

Gravitational radiation offers a unique opportunity to study the large-scale structure of the Universe, gravitational wave sources and propagation in a novel way. In this study, a code called CLASS_GWB is developed to compute the anisotropies of the astrophysical gravitational wave background and is applied to the calculation of the angular power spectrum of the gravitational wave background in the LIGO-Virgo frequency band.