Title:
Snap! Crackle! Pop! Detecting and characterizing a gravitational
stochastic background

Abstract:
Over the next few years, physicists will begin to place gravitational wave
based observational limits on astrophysical phenomena.  Some of these
limits will be the result of needle-in-a-haystack style searches for
specific events, such as the inspiral of binary blackhole-neutron star
systems.  Others will come from searches for ever-present background
signals analogous to the cosmic microwave background of electromagnetic
waves.  These background signals, known as stochastic backgrounds, are the
superposition of many indistinguishable events. Possible sources could be
cosmological, such as the big bang itself, or respectively more recent
phenomena such as a collection of high redshift supernovae.  I describe
efforts to devise detection algorithms for gravitational background
signals.  My primary focus will be on the detection and characterization
of a non-Gaussian stochastic background possibly produced by dilute
collections of burst events. In the extreme non-Gaussian limit, such a
signal would have characteristics similar to the sound of pop-corn
popping.