A template bank to search for gravitational waves from inspiralling compact binaries: II. Phenomenological model

TL;DR

This paper presents a phenomenological template bank for gravitational wave searches from non-spinning black hole binaries, demonstrating high match rates with physical templates used in LIGO data analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a new phenomenological template bank for black hole binary searches, improving detection efficiency in LIGO data analysis.

Findings

Template bank achieves >95% match with physical templates.

Effective in searching for non-spinning black hole binaries.

Applicable to multiple LIGO science runs.

Abstract

Matched filtering is used to search for gravitational waves emitted by inspiralling compact binaries in data from ground-based interferometers. One of the key aspects of the detection process is the deployment of a set of templates, also called a template bank, to cover the astrophysically interesting region of the parameter space. In a companion paper, we described the template-bank algorithm used in the analysis of LIGO data to search for signals from non-spinning binaries made of neutron star and/or stellar-mass black holes; this template bank is based upon physical template families. In this paper, we describe the phenomenological template bank that was used to search for gravitational waves from non-spinning black hole binaries (from stellar mass formation) in the second, third and fourth LIGO science runs. We briefly explain the design of the bank, whose templates are based on a phenomenological detection template family. We show that this template bank gives matches greater than 95% with the physical template families that are expected to be captured by the phenomenological templates.