While the third LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalog includes 90 signals, it is believed that $\mathcal{O}({10}^5)$ binary black holes merge somewhere in the Universe every year. Although these signals are too weak to be detected individually with current observatories, they combine to create a stochastic background, which is potentially detectable in the near future. LIGO-Virgo searches for the gravitational-wave background using cross-correlation have so far yielded upper limits. However, Smith and Thrane [Phys. Rev. X 8, 021019 (2018).] showed that a vastly more sensitive, template-based search can be carried out by incorporating information about the phase evolution of binary black hole signals. This improved sensitivity comes at a cost; the template-based search is computationally expensive and requires a far more detailed understanding of systematic errors than is required for the cross-correlation search. In this work, we demonstrate the template-based approach with realistic data, paving the way for a gravitational-wave background search with unprecedented sensitivity.

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• Formation & evolution of stars & galaxies
• Gravitational wave sources
• Gravitational waves