Stochastic backgrounds of gravitational waves from compact sources

We estimate the gravitational wave background generated by a cosmological population of core-collapse supernovae. In particular, both the radiation emitted during the collapse to black holes and the spin-down radiation emitted by hot, young rapidly rotating neutron stars have been considered. Within their peculiar emission properties, these astrophysical sources of gravitational radiation are likely to have been formed since the beginning of star formation. In order to estimate their rate of formation throughout the Universe we have reconstructed the supernova rate as a function of redshift from an observation-based determination of star formation rate density evolution. We have investigated the overall signal produced by the ensemble of sources exploring the parameter space and discussing its possible detectability.