Performance of Newtonian filters in detecting gravitational waves from coalescing binaries

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Newtonian filters in detecting gravitational waves from coalescing binaries, considering post-Newtonian effects and parameter adjustments, and finds they perform adequately for initial and advanced LIGO detectors.

Contribution

It investigates whether Newtonian filters can be compensated for post-Newtonian phase differences by parameter shifts, assessing their detection performance.

Findings

Newtonian filters perform adequately in detection tasks.

Parameter shifts can partially compensate for post-Newtonian phase differences.

Newtonian filters are suitable for initial and advanced LIGO detectors.

Abstract

Coalescing binary systems are one of the most promising sources of gravitational waves. The technique of matched filtering used in the detection of gravitational waves from coalescing binaries relies on the construction of accurate templates. Until recently filters modelled on the quadrupole or the Newtonian approximation were deemed sufficient. Recently it was shown that post-Newtonian effects contribute to a secular growth in the phase difference between the actual signal and its corresponding Newtonian template. In this paper we investigate the possibility of compensating for the phase difference caused by the post-Newtonian terms by allowing for a shift in the Newtonian filter parameters. We find that Newtonian filters perform adequately for the purpose of detecting the presence of the signal for both the initial and the advanced LIGO detectors.