Testing the LIGO Inspiral Analysis with Hardware Injections

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that hardware injections of simulated inspiral signals effectively test and validate the LIGO detection pipeline, confirming accurate recovery of signal parameters and pipeline robustness.

Contribution

It introduces a method for testing the LIGO inspiral analysis pipeline using hardware injections and validates its effectiveness through successful signal recovery.

Findings

Injected signals are successfully recovered by the pipeline.

Recovered parameters match injected signal parameters.

Hardware injections validate the calibration and analysis pipeline.

Abstract

Injection of simulated binary inspiral signals into detector hardware provides an excellent test of the inspiral detection pipeline. By recovering the physical parameters of an injected signal, we test our understanding of both instrumental calibration and the data analysis pipeline. We describe an inspiral search code and results from hardware injection tests and demonstrate that injected signals can be recovered by the data analysis pipeline. The parameters of the recovered signals match those of the injected signals.