CLASS_GWB: Robust modeling of the astrophysical gravitational wave background anisotropies

Abstract

Gravitational radiation offers a unique possibility to study the large-scale structure 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 information, interpreting this signal requires a non-trivial multidisciplinary approach. In this work we present the complete computation of the signal produced by compact object mergers 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 numerical tools to robustly compute the angular power spectrum of the anisotropies of the gravitational wave background generated by astrophysical sources in the LIGO-Virgo frequency 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.