Mock LISA Data Challenge
Mock LISA Data ChallengeIn support of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) gravitational wave observatory, we are conducting several rounds of mock data challenges. The LISA Mock Data Challenges were proposed and discussed at meetings organized by the US and European LISA Project that were attended by a broad cross section of the international gravitational-wave community. These challenges are meant to be blind tests, but not really a contest.These serve the dual purposes of fostering the development of LISA data analysis tools and capabilities, and of demonstrating the technical readiness already achieved by the gravitational-wave community in distilling a rich science payoff from the LISA data output.The Mock LISA Data Challenge (MLDC) Taskforce has been working since the beginning of this year to formulate challenge problems of maximum efficacy, to establish criteria for the evaluation of the analyses, to develop standard models of the LISA mission (orbit, noises) and of the LISA sources (waveforms, parameterization), to provide computing tools such as LISA response simulators, source waveform generators, and a Mock Data Challenge file format, and more generally to provide any technical support necessary to the challengers, including moderated discussion forums and a software repository. The first set of challenge datasets were released following the Sixth International LISA Symposium (June 19-23, 2006, at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland) With the results returned in Dec 2006 and preliminary analysis presented at the 11th Gravitational Wave Data Anlaysis Workshop (December 18-21, 2006, at the Albert Einstein Institute, in Golm, Germany). Some 15 groups around the world participated in the first round challenges, with ten collaborations returning results. Round 2 finished in June 2006, with a similar number of groups participating. The challenges involve the distribution of several datasets, encoded in a simple standard format, and containing combinations of realistic simulated LISA noise with the signals from one or more LISA gravitational-wave sources of parameters unknown to the challenge participants. The first round of challenges focused on parameter estimation for examples of several sources in otherwise clean noise. The second and third sets of challenge datasets, embody more ambitious data-analysis problems, with Round 2 just completed in June 2007. Concluding in December 2007, 10 groups participated in a re-issue of challenge 1, called Round 1B, to provide an easy opportunity for new groups to develop analysis codes. Round 3, with new sources and source models, also begins in December 2007. |
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