How Many Templates for GW Chirp Detection? The Minimal-Match Issue Revisited

TL;DR

This paper revisits the minimal-match problem in gravitational wave chirp detection, providing a refined method to estimate the optimal number of templates balancing detection performance and computational cost.

Contribution

It introduces an improved approach to determine the minimal number of templates needed for effective GW chirp detection, enhancing previous estimates.

Findings

Refined estimate of template number for GW detection

Better tradeoff between detection efficiency and computational load

Enhanced understanding of the no-signal distribution in correlator banks

Abstract

In a recent paper dealing with maximum likelihood detection of gravitational wave chirps from coalescing binaries with unknown parameters we introduced an accurate representation of the no-signal cumulative distribution of the supremum of the whole correlator bank. This result can be used to derive a refined estimate of the number of templates yielding the best tradeoff between detector's performance (in terms of lost signals among those potentially detectable) and computational burden.