Taiji data challenge for exploring gravitational wave universe

The direct observation of gravitational waves(GWs)opens a new window for exploring new physics from quanta to cosmos and provides a new tool for probing the evolution of universe.GWs detection in space covers a broad spectrum ranging over more than four orders of magnitude and enables us to study rich physical and astronomical phenomena.Taiji is a proposed space-based gravitational wave(GW)detection mission that will be launched in the 2030s.Taiji will be exposed to numerous overlapping and persistent GW signals buried in the foreground and background,posing various data analysis challenges.In order to empower potential scientific discoveries,the Mock Laser Interferometer Space Antenna(LISA)data challenge and the LISA data challenge(LDC)were developed.While LDC provides a baseline framework,the first LDC needs to be updated with more realistic simulations and adjusted detector responses for Taiji’s constellation.In this paper,we review the scientific objectives and the roadmap for Taiji,as well as the technical difficulties in data analysis and the data generation strategy,and present the associated data challenges.In contrast to LDC,we utilize second-order Keplerian orbit and second-generation time delay interferometry techniques.Additionally,we employ a new model for the extreme-mass-ratio inspiral waveform and stochastic GW background spectrum,which enables us to test general relativity and measure the non-Gaussianity of curvature perturbations.Furthermore,we present a comprehensive showcase of parameter estimation using a toy dataset.This showcase not only demonstrates the scientific potential of the Taiji data challenge(TDC)but also serves to validate the effectiveness of the pipeline.As the first data challenge for Taiji,we aim to build an open ground for data analysis related to Taiji sources and sciences.More details can be found on the official website(taiji-tdc.ictp-ap.org).

The Gravitational-wave physics Ⅱ: Progress

It has been a half-decade since the first direct detection of gravitational waves, which signifies the coming of the era of the gravitational-wave astronomy and gravitational-wave cosmology. The increasing number of the detected gravitational-wave events has revealed the promising capability of constraining various aspects of cosmology, astronomy, and gravity. Due to the limited space in this review article, we will briefly summarize the recent progress over the past five years, but with a special focus on some of our own work for the Key Project "Physics associated with the gravitational waves" supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. In particular,(1) we have presented the mechanism of the gravitational-wave production during some physical processes of the early Universe, such as inflation, preheating and phase transition, and the cosmological implications of gravitational-wave measurements;(2) we have put constraints on the neutron star maximum mass according to GW170817 observations;(3) we have developed a numerical relativity algorithm based on the finite element method and a waveform model for the binary black hole coalescence along an eccentric orbit.

The LISA-Taiji Network:Precision Localization of Coalescing Massive Black Hole Binaries

We explore a potential LISA-Taiji network to fast and accurately localize the coalescing massive black hole binaries.For an equalmass binary located at redshift of 1 with a total intrinsic mass of 10^(5)M_(⊙),the LISA-Taiji network may achieve almost four orders of magnitude improvement on the source localization region compared to an individual detector.The precision measurement of sky location from the gravitational-wave signal may completely identify the host galaxy with low redshifts prior to the final black hole merger.Such identification of the host galaxy is vital for the follow-up variability in electromagnetic emissions of the circumbinary disc when the binary merges to a new black hole and enables the coalescing massive black hole binaries to be used as a standard siren to probe the expansion history of the Universe.

Standard siren cosmology with the LISA-Taiji network

Gravitational waves(GWs)are a marvelous prediction of general relativity.The GW waveform from a compact binary coalescence is theoretically predictable,and different binary systems emit GWs in different frequency bands.The frequencies of GWs emitted by stellar-mass binaries fall within the detection band of ground-based detectors(10-10^(4)Hz).GWs at lower frequencies(10^(-4)-1 Hz)emitted by massive black hole binaries(MBHBs)have wavelengths larger than the earth itself.Deploying a GW detector large enough to efficiently detect them requires going to space.

Sampling with Prior Knowledge for High-dimensional Gravitational Wave Data Analysis

Extracting knowledge from high-dimensional data has been notoriously difficult,primarily due to the so-called"curse of dimensionality"and the complex joint distributions of these dimensions.This is a particularly profound issue for high-dimensional gravitational wave data analysis where one requires to conduct Bayesian inference and estimate joint posterior distributions.In this study,we incorporate prior physical knowledge by sampling from desired interim distributions to develop the training dataset.Accordingly,the more relevant regions of the high-dimensional feature space are covered by additional data points,such that the model can learn the subtle but important details.We adapt the normalizing flow method to be more expressive and trainable,such that the information can be effectively extracted and represented by the transformation between the prior and target distributions.Once trained,our model only takes approximately 1 s on one V100 GPU to generate thousands of samples for probabilistic inference purposes.The evaluation of our approach confirms the efficacy and efficiency of gravitational wave data inferences and points to a promising direction for similar research.The source code,specifications,and detailed procedures are publicly accessible on GitHub.