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Authors: Stanislav Babak, John G. Baker, Matthew J. Benacquista, Neil J. Cornish, Jeff Crowder, Shane L. Larson, Eric Plagnol, Edward K. Porter, Michele Vallisneri, Alberto Vecchio (the Mock LISA Data Challenge Task Force), Keith Arnaud, Leor Barack, Arkadiusz Błaut, Curt Cutler, Stephen Fairhurst, Jonathan Gair, Xuefei Gong, Ian Harry, Deepak Khurana, Andrzej Królak, Ilya Mandel, Reinhard Prix, B. S. Sathyaprakash, Pavlin Savov, Yu Shang, Miquel Trias, John Veitch, Yan Wang, Linqing Wen, John T. Whelan (the Challenge 1B participants)

Date: 12 Jun 2008

Abstract: The Mock LISA Data Challenges are a programme to demonstrate and encourage the development of LISA data-analysis capabilities, tools and techniques. At the time of this workshop, three rounds of challenges had been completed, and the next was about to start. In this article we provide a critical analysis of entries to the latest completed round, Challenge 1B. The entries confirm the consolidation of a range of data-analysis techniques for Galactic and massive--black-hole binaries, and they include the first convincing examples of detection and parameter estimation of extreme--mass-ratio inspiral sources. In this article we also introduce the next round, Challenge 3. Its data sets feature more realistic waveform models (e.g., Galactic binaries may now chirp, and massive--black-hole binaries may precess due to spin interactions), as well as new source classes (bursts from cosmic strings, isotropic stochastic backgrounds) and more complicated nonsymmetric instrument noise.

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