New framework to detect multimessenger signals from the bright sporadic stochastic gravitational wave background
Phys. Rev. D 114, 043075 – Published 31 August, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/dtw2-5kv2
Abstract
The temporal dependence of the astrophysical stochastic gravitational-wave (GW) background (SGWB) in the hecto-hertz band brings a unique avenue to identify multimessenger signals to these sources by using coincident detection in both GW and multiband electromagnetic (EM) signals. We developed a new analysis pipeline, multimessenger cross-correlation () that can search for EM counterparts to the SGWB signal originating from both modeled and unmodeled sources by harnessing the nearly full-sky gamma-ray sky map. We provide an observation strategy that can be followed by current and future missions to discover EM counterparts to the weak GW signal hidden in the SGWB. We demonstrate the ability of this technique to drastically reduce the false alarm rates when involving EM multiband analysis. This formalism aims toward advancing the multimessenger observation frontier and improving our understanding of the population of bright SGWB sources present in the high-redshift universe and can also be applied to other messengers such as neutrinos in the future.
