English

Fast evaluation of multi-detector consistency for real-time gravitational wave searches

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2020-02-05 v2 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

Gravitational waves searches for compact binary mergers with LIGO and Virgo are presently a two stage process. First, a gravitational wave signal is identified. Then, an exhaustive search over possible signal parameters is performed. It is critical that the identification stage is efficient in order to maximize the number of gravitational wave sources that are identified. Initial identification of gravitational wave signals with LIGO and Virgo happens in real-time which requires that less than one second of computational time must be used for each one second of gravitational wave data collected. In contrast, subsequent parameter estimation may require hundreds of hours of computational time to analyze the same one second of gravitational wave data. The real-time identification requirement necessitates efficient and often approximate methods for signal analysis. We describe one piece of real-time gravitational-wave identification: an efficient method for ascertaining a signal's consistency between multiple gravitational wave detectors suitable for real-time gravitational wave searches for compact binary mergers. This technique was used in analyses of Advanced LIGO's second observing run and Advanced Virgo's first observing run.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.02227,
  title  = {Fast evaluation of multi-detector consistency for real-time gravitational wave searches},
  author = {Chad Hanna and Sarah Caudill and Cody Messick and Amit Reza and Surabhi Sachdev and Leo Tsukada and Kipp Cannon and Kent Blackburn and Jolien D. E. Creighton and Heather Fong and Patrick Godwin and Shasvath Kapadia and Tjonnie G. F. Li and Ryan Magee and Duncan Meacher and Debnandini Mukherjee and Alex Pace and Stephen Privitera and Rico K. L. Lo and Leslie Wade},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.02227},
  year   = {2020}
}