Contamination of transient gravitational waves in LISA data by gaps and glitches

Abstract

We present a probabilistic framework to quantify the impact of artefacts (glitches and gaps) in LISA data on transient gravitational wave signals. By modeling both artefacts and transient signals as independent Poisson processes, and characterising the contaminating effect of an artefact by an associated dead time, we estimate the probability distribution of the total contamination time during the observation period using a Normal approximation under various contamination scenarios. Using the same approach, we also estimate the probability that a population of transient signals contaminates each other. We demonstrate the validity of the Normal approximation by comparing it to the numerical distribution obtained via simulations. Our approach provides a rapid means to assess the potential impact of glitches and gaps on LISA science, and can be used as a figure of merit to evaluate different instrumental scenarios.