Detection of gravitational waves from inspiraling compact binaries using a network of interferometric detectors

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive data analysis framework for detecting gravitational waves from inspiraling binaries using a network of interferometric detectors, generalizing previous coincident detector models to arbitrarily oriented and distributed setups.

Contribution

It derives the relation between the optimal detection statistic and the network correlation vector for arbitrarily oriented and located detectors, extending prior coincident detector analysis.

Findings

Established the relation between the optimal statistic and the network correlation vector.

Generalized the detection framework to a network of arbitrarily oriented detectors.

Provided a theoretical foundation for gravitational wave detection with multiple detectors.

Abstract

We formulate the data analysis problem for the detection of the Newtonian waveform from an inspiraling compact-binary by a network of arbitrarily oriented and arbitrarily distributed laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors. We obtain for the first time the relation between the optimal statistic and the magnitude of the network correlation vector, which is constructed from the matched network-filter. This generalizes the calculation reported in an earlier work (gr-qc/9906064), where the detectors are taken to be coincident.