A targeted spectral interpolation algorithm for the detection of continuous gravitational waves

TL;DR

The paper introduces SplInter, a spectral interpolation method that efficiently detects continuous gravitational waves by removing phase evolution in the frequency domain, offering significant computational advantages over traditional methods.

Contribution

SplInter provides a faster, efficient spectral interpolation algorithm for gravitational wave detection, improving upon existing time-domain Bayesian pipelines with minimal sensitivity loss.

Findings

SplInter achieves up to 50,000 times faster analysis than heterodyne methods.

The method maintains comparable sensitivity for most target signals.

SplInter enables rapid follow-up of candidate signals from other searches.

Abstract

We present an improved method of targeting continuous gravitational-wave signals in data from the LIGO and Virgo detectors with a higher efficiency than the time-domain Bayesian pipeline used in many previous searches. Our spectral interpolation algorithm, SplInter, removes the intrinsic phase evolution of the signal from source rotation and relative detector motion. We do this in the frequency domain and generate a time series containing only variations in the signal due to the antenna pattern. Although less flexible than the classic heterodyne approach, SplInter allows for rapid analysis of putative signals from isolated (and some binary) pulsars, and efficient follow-up searches for candidate signals generated by other search methods. The computational saving over the heterodyne approach can be many orders of magnitude, up to a factor of around fifty thousand in some cases, with a minimal impact on overall sensitivity for most targets.