Reconstructing source motion from gravitational wave strain

TL;DR

This paper develops a method using normalizing flows to reconstruct the possible source motions and masses of gravitational wave signals without relying on specific source models, aiding in understanding unmodelled burst signals.

Contribution

It introduces a novel technique employing normalizing flows to reconstruct source motions and masses solely from gravitational wave strain data, including degenerate solutions.

Findings

Successfully reconstructs distributions of source motions from strain data.

Demonstrates the method across multiple gravitational wave detectors.

Captures degenerate source configurations producing identical signals.

Abstract

Searches for un-modelled burst gravitational wave signals return potential candidates for short duration signals. As there is no clear model for the source in these searches, one needs to understand and reconstruct the system that produced the gravitational waves. Here we aim to reconstruct the source motion and masses of a system based only on its gravitational wave strain. We train a normalising flow on two models including circular orbits and random unphysical motion of two point masses. These models are used as a toy problem to illustrate the technique. We then reconstruct a distribution of possible motions of masses that can produce the given gravitational wave signal. We demonstrate the ability to reconstruct the full distribution of possible mass motions from strain data across multiple gravitational wave detectors. This distribution encompasses the degenerate motions that are expected to produce identical gravitational wave strains.