Report on the second Mock LISA data challenge

Babak, Stanislav and Baker, John G and Benacquista, Matthew J and Cornish, Neil J and Crowder, Jeff and Cutler, Curt and Larson, Shane L and Littenberg, Tyson B and Porter, Edward K and Vallisneri, Michele and Vecchio, Alberto and Auger, Gerard and Barack, Leor and Blaut, Arkadiusz and Bloomer, Ed and Brown, Duncan A and Christensen, Nelson and Clark, James and Fairhurst, Stephen and Gair, Jonathan R and Halloin, Hubert and Hendry, Martin and Jimenez, Arturo and Królak, Andrzej and Mandel, Ilya and Messenger, Chris and Meyer, Renate and Mohanty, Soumya and Nayak, Rajesh and Petiteau, Antoine and Pitkin, Matt and Plagnol, Eric and Prix, Reinhard and Robinson, Emma L and Roever, Christian and Savov, Pavlin and Stroeer, Alexander and Toher, Jennifer and Veitch, John and Vinet, Jean-Yves and Wen, Linqing and Whelan, John T and Woan, Graham (2008) Report on the second Mock LISA data challenge. Classical and Quantum Gravity, 25 (11): 114037. ISSN 0264-9381

Abstract

The Mock LISA data challenges are a program to demonstrate LISA data-analysis capabilities and to encourage their development. Each round of challenges consists of several data sets containing simulated instrument noise and gravitational waves from sources of undisclosed parameters. Participants are asked to analyze the data sets and report the maximum information about the source parameters. The challenges are being released in rounds of increasing complexity and realism: here we present the results of Challenge 2, issued in Jan 2007, which successfully demonstrated the recovery of signals from nonspinning supermassive-black-hole binaries with optimal SNRs between \10 and 2000, from \20\ 000 overlapping galactic white-dwarf binaries (among a realistically distributed population of 26 million), and from the extreme-mass-ratio inspirals of compact objects into central galactic black holes with optimal SNRs \100.