Sparse data inpainting for the recovery of Galactic-binary gravitational wave signals from gapped data

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel sparse inpainting algorithm for recovering galactic binary gravitational wave signals from gapped LISA data, improving detection accuracy and noise estimation in the presence of data gaps.

Contribution

The paper presents a nonparametric inpainting method based on sparse Fourier representation that jointly recovers signals and noise statistics from gapped gravitational wave data.

Findings

Accurate estimation of galactic binary signals from gapped data.

Statistically consistent noise estimation in ungapped measurements.

Effective recovery demonstrated on simulated LISA data challenges.

Abstract

The forthcoming space-based gravitational wave observatory LISA will open a new window for the measurement of galactic binaries, which will deliver unprecedented information about these systems. However, the detection of galactic binary gravitational wave signals is challenged by the presence of gaps in the data. Whether being planned or not, gapped data dramatically reduce our ability to detect faint signals and the risk of misdetection soars. Inspired by advances in signal processing, we introduce a \nonparametric inpainting algorithm based on the sparse representation of the galactic binary signal in the Fourier domain. In contrast to traditional inpainting approaches, noise statistics are known theoretically on ungapped measurements only. This calls for the joint recovery of both the ungapped noise and the galactic binary signal. We thoroughly show that sparse inpainting yields an accurate estimation of the gravitational imprint of the galactic binaries. Additionally, we highlight that the proposed algorithm produces a statistically consistent ungapped noise estimate. We further evaluate the performances of the proposed inpainting methods to recover the gravitational wave signal on a simple example involving verification galactic binaries recently proposed in LISA data challenges.