Computation of highly eccentric EMRIs to characterize background confusion noise in LISA

Extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs) result when stellar mass compact objects orbiting a supermassive black hole (SMBH) undergo radiation damping. Such systems are prime sources for the proposed space-based gravitational wave detector LISA. However, highly eccentric EMRIs produce significant gravitational radiation only when the orbiting body is at closest approach to the SMBH. While a single source is not likely to be detectable, an ensemble of many such sources may cause background confusion noise that could mask sources that LISA would otherwise detect. We solve the Teukolsky equation using a frequency domain hypergeometric approach to probe the gravitational radiation produced by highly eccentric EMRIs in hopes of characterizing this signal confusion background. This code is programmed in a new programming language called Julia which is syntactically similar to Python but comes close to the speeds of C or Fortran for numerical computation. Additionally, we discuss possible methods of skipping evaluation of small modes to speed up computation times.