Mother templates for gravitational wave chirps

TL;DR

This paper introduces mother templates for gravitational wave chirp signals that depend only on mass ratio, significantly reducing computational costs and storage needs in binary black hole and neutron star searches.

Contribution

It proposes a novel approach to construct mass ratio-dependent mother templates, enabling on-line searches with reduced computational and storage requirements.

Findings

Reduction in computational costs by up to a factor of 10.

Storage savings of up to a factor of 100.

Templates are independent of total mass, simplifying searches.

Abstract

Templates used in a search for binary black holes and neutron stars in gravitational wave interferometer data will have to be computed on-line since the computational storage and retrieval costs for the template bank are too expensive. The conventional dimensionless variable $T=(c^3/Gm)t,$ where $m$ is the total mass of a binary, in the time-domain and a not-so-conventional velocity-like variable $v=(\pi Gm f)^{1/3}$ in the Fourier-domain, render the phasing of the waves independent of the total mass of the system enabling the construction of {\it mother templates} that depend only on the mass ratio of a black hole binary. Use of such mother templates in a template bank will bring about a reduction in computational costs up to a factor of 10 and a saving on storage by a factor of 100.