Best network chirplet-chain: Near-optimal coherent detection of unmodeled gravitation wave chirps with a network of detectors

TL;DR

This paper extends the best chirplet chain (BCC) algorithm for detecting unmodeled gravitational wave chirps to a network of detectors, enabling joint source localization and improved detection of generic, quasi-periodic GW signals.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-detector extension of the BCC method, allowing coherent detection and source parameter estimation of unmodeled GW chirps across multiple detectors.

Findings

Joint analysis improves detection horizon.

Method enables source localization and polarization estimation.

Proof of concept demonstrated for full sky blind search.

Abstract

The searches of impulsive gravitational waves (GW) in the data of the ground-based interferometers focus essentially on two types of waveforms: short unmodeled bursts and chirps from inspiralling compact binaries. There is room for other types of searches based on different models. Our objective is to fill this gap. More specifically, we are interested in GW chirps with an arbitrary phase/frequency vs. time evolution. These unmodeled GW chirps may be considered as the generic signature of orbiting/spinning sources. We expect quasi-periodic nature of the waveform to be preserved independent of the physics which governs the source motion. Several methods have been introduced to address the detection of unmodeled chirps using the data of a single detector. Those include the best chirplet chain (BCC) algorithm introduced by the authors. In the next years, several detectors will be in operation. The joint coherent analysis of GW by multiple detectors can improve the sight horizon, the estimation of the source location and the wave polarization angles. Here, we extend the BCC search to the multiple detector case. The method amounts to searching for salient paths in the combined time-frequency representation of two synthetic streams. The latter are time-series which combine the data from each detector linearly in such a way that all the GW signatures received are added constructively. We give a proof of principle for the full sky blind search in a simplified situation which shows that the joint estimation of the source sky location and chirp frequency is possible.