Gravitational waves from cosmological compact binaries

We consider gravitational waves emitted by various populations of compactbinaries at cosmological distances. We use population synthesis models tocharacterize the properties of double neutron stars, double black holes anddouble white dwarf binaries as well as white dwarf-neutron star, whitedwarf-black hole and black hole-neutron star systems. We use theobservationally determined cosmic star formation history to reconstruct theredshift distribution of these sources and their merging rate evolution. Thegravitational signals emitted by each source during its early-inspiral phaseadd randomly to produce a stochastic background in the low frequency band withspectral strain amplitude between 10^{-18} Hz^{-1/2} and 5 10^{-17} Hz^{-1/2} at frequencies in the interval [5 10^{-6}-5 10^{-5}] Hz.The overall signal which, at frequencies above 10^{-4}Hz, is largely dominatedby double white dwarf systems, might be detectable with LISA in the frequencyrange [1-10] mHz and acts like a confusion limited noise component which mightlimit the LISA sensitivity at frequencies above 1 mHz