Orateur
Description
The detection of gravitational waves from compact-binary coalescences by LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA has opened a new window onto the Universe. As detector sensitivities improve, and with the advent of future observatories such as LISA and the Einstein Telescope, the number and diversity of individually detectable gravitational-wave sources will increase dramatically. Yet many more sources will remain too faint to be detected individually, or will overlap in time and frequency, giving rise to gravitational-wave backgrounds. In this talk, I will discuss various astrophysical gravitational-wave backgrounds and the source populations that generate them, including white-dwarf binaries, binary neutron stars, stellar-mass and supermassive black-hole binaries. I will also highlight some of the challenges involved in detecting and characterizing these backgrounds, which can themselves constitute an additional noise source in searches for cosmological gravitational-wave signals.