Speaker
Description
While a first-order phase transition at the electroweak scale is not expected within the Standard Model, these occur in many BSM scenarios. Therefore, detecting a stochastic gravitational wave background consistent with a first-order phase transition could point to new physics, while a null detection could constrain or even exclude many BSM models. However, recovering the physical parameters of an underlying phase transition from a possible signal at LISA is not straightforward, partly due to other possible sources of a stochastic gravitational wave background. In this talk I will present our recent advances in reconstructing the phase transition parameters from mock LISA data using parameterised templates as an approximation to a more complete physical model, which greatly speeds up the reconstruction process. I will also discuss how we hope to include more realistic noise sources in our mock LISA data in future analysis.
