Multichannel matched filtering for spherical gravitational wave antennas

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a multidimensional matched filter enhances parameter estimation and reduces false alarms in gravitational wave detection with spherical resonant detectors, without significantly increasing computational costs.

Contribution

It introduces a multidimensional matched filter as an effective follow-up to the coherent detection method for spherical gravitational wave antennas, improving detection accuracy and false alarm rates.

Findings

Improved determination of signal parameters such as arrival time, amplitude, and frequency.

False alarm rate reduced by approximately a factor of 3.

Maintains computational efficiency with hierarchical analysis.

Abstract

We study the performance of a multidimensional matched filter as a follow-up module of the coherent method recently developed by two of us for the detection of gravitational wave bursts by spherical resonant detectors. We have tested this strategy on the same set of injections used for the coherent method and found that the matched filter sensibly improves the determination of relevant parameters as the arrival time, amplitude, central frequency and arrival direction of the signal. The matched filter also improves the false alarm rate, reducing it roughly by a factor of 3. The hierarchical structure of the whole analysis pipeline allows to obtain these results without a significant increase of the computation time.