May 5 – 8, 2026
CERN
Europe/Zurich timezone

Tackling the LISA Global Fit: Scalable Simulation-Based Inference and the Road Ahead

May 6, 2026, 10:50 AM
20m
40/S2-A01 - Salle Anderson (CERN)

40/S2-A01 - Salle Anderson

CERN

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Talk AI for Data Analysis AI for data analysis

Speaker

James Alvey (University of Cambridge)

Description

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will deliver an unprecedented view of the gravitational-wave universe, but unlocking its scientific potential hinges on a monumental data science challenge: the "global fit". Extracting thousands of overlapping, time-varying signals from complex instrumental noise is a high-dimensional inference problem that pushes the limits of traditional stochastic sampling methods. In this talk, I will explore how Simulation-Based Inference (SBI) is emerging as a promising framework to break this computational bottleneck. I will overview the current landscape of SBI applied to LISA data, highlighting how it has been used across the various source classes. Finally, I will outline what I see as the significant hurdles that remain as we scale these algorithms toward a full analysis pipeline.

Author

James Alvey (University of Cambridge)

Presentation materials