A Coincidence Null Test for Poisson-Distributed Events
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology2021-02-10v1High Energy Astrophysical PhenomenaInstrumentation and Methods for AstrophysicsInstrumentation and Detectors
When transient events are observed with multiple sensors, it is often necessary to establish the significance of coincident events. We derive a universal null test for an arbitrary number of sensors motivated by the archetypal detection problem for independent Poisson-distributed events in gravitational-wave detectors such as LIGO and Virgo. In these detectors, transient events may be witnessed by myriad channels that record interferometric signals and the surrounding physical environment. We apply our null test to a broad set of simulated gravitational-wave events as well as to a real gravitational-wave detection to determine which auxiliary channels do and do not witness real gravitational waves, and therefore which are safe to use when constructing vetoes. We also describe how our approach can be used to study detector artifacts and their origin, as well as to quantify the statistical independence of candidate GW signals from noise artifacts observed in auxiliary channels.
@article{arxiv.2011.13787,
title = {A Coincidence Null Test for Poisson-Distributed Events},
author = {Reed Essick and Geoffrey Mo and Erik Katsavounidis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.13787},
year = {2021}
}