GWSpace: a multi-mission science data simulator for space-based gravitational wave detection

Abstract

Space-based gravitational wave detectors such as TianQin, laser interferometer space antenna (LISA), and Taiji have the potential to outperform themselves through joint observation. To achieve this, it is desirable to practice joint data analysis in advance on simulated data that encodes the intrinsic correlation among the signals found in different detectors that operate simultaneously. In this paper, we introduce GWSpace, a package that can simulate the joint detection data from TianQin, LISA, and Taiji. The software is not a groundbreaking work that starts from scratch. Rather, we use as many open-source resources as possible, tailoring them to the needs of simulating the multi-mission science data and putting everything into a ready-to-go and easy-to-use package. We shall describe the main components, the construction, and a few examples of application of the package. A common coordinate system, namely the Solar System barycenter coordinate system, is utilized to calculate spacecraft orbits for all three missions. The paper also provides a brief derivation of the detection process and outlines the general waveform of sources detectable by these detectors.