New approach to search for long transient gravitational waves from inspiraling compact binary systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel search method for long transient gravitational waves from inspiraling compact binaries, leveraging continuous wave techniques to improve detection efficiency and reduce computational costs.

Contribution

The paper presents a new detection strategy that optimizes the search grid and reduces computational costs for long transient gravitational wave signals.

Findings

Method effectively detects long-transient signals and continuous gravitational waves.

Significant reduction in search computational cost.

Potential to detect signals up to the Galactic Center at 8 kpc.

Abstract

The search for gravitational waves generated by the inspiral phase of binaries of light compact objects holds significant promise in testing the existence of primordial black holes and/or other exotic objects. In this paper, we present a new method to detect such signals exploiting some techniques typically applied in searches for continuous quasi-monochromatic gravitational waves. We describe the signal model employed and present a new strategy to optimally construct the search grid over the parameter space investigated, significantly reducing the search computing cost. Additionally, we estimate the pipeline sensitivity corroborating the results with software injections in real data from the LIGO third observing run. The results show that the method is well suited to detect long-transient signals and standard continuous gravitational waves. According to the criteria used in the grid construction step, the method can be implemented to cover a wide parameter space with slightly reduced sensitivity and lower computational cost or to focus on a narrower parameter space with increased sensitivity at a higher computational expense. The method shows an astrophysical reach up to the Galactic Center (8kpc) for some regions of the parameter space and given search configurations.