Multiband parameter estimation with phase coherence and extrinsic marginalization: Extracting more information from low-SNR CBC signals in LISA data
Shichao Wu 1,∗ Alexander H. Nitz 2,† Ian Harry 3, Stanislav Babak 4, Michael J. Williams 3, Collin Capano 2,5, and Connor Weaving
This paper presents a novel coherent multiband analysis framework for characterizing stellar- and intermediate-mass binary black holes using LISA and next-generation ground-based detectors (ET and CE), leveraging the latest developments in the PyCBC pipeline. Given the population parameters inferred from LVK results and LISA's sensitivity limits at high frequencies, most stellar-mass binary black holes would likely have SNRs below 5 in LISA, but the most state-of-the-art multiband parameter estimation methods, such as those using ET and CE posteriors as priors for LISA, typically struggle to analyze sources with a LISA SNR less than 5. We present a novel coherent multiband parameter estimation method that directly calculates a joint likelihood, which is highly efficient; this efficiency is enabled by multiband marginalization of the extrinsic parameter space, implemented using importance sampling, which can work robustly even when the LISA SNR is as low as 3. Having an SNR of