A New Waveform Consistency Test for Gravitational Wave Inspiral Searches

TL;DR

The paper introduces a new waveform consistency test based on the filter output's time history to improve the discrimination between true gravitational wave signals and noise artifacts in interferometric data.

Contribution

It proposes a novel waveform consistency test that enhances the ability to distinguish genuine inspiral signals from noise glitches beyond the standard  test.

Findings

The new test effectively separates true signals from false alarms in LIGO data.

It outperforms the standard  test in identifying noise glitches.

Application to LIGO data demonstrates improved detection confidence.

Abstract

Searches for binary inspiral signals in data collected by interferometric gravitational wave detectors utilize matched filtering techniques. Although matched filtering is optimal in the case of stationary Gaussian noise, data from real detectors often contains "glitches" and episodes of excess noise which cause filter outputs to ring strongly. We review the standard \chi^2 statistic which is used to test whether the filter output has appropriate contributions from several different frequency bands. We then propose a new type of waveform consistency test which is based on the time history of the filter output. We apply one such test to the data from the first LIGO science run and show that it cleanly distinguishes between true inspiral waveforms and large-amplitude false signals which managed to pass the standard \chi^2 test.