Matched filtering of gravitational waves from inspiraling compact binaries: Computational cost and template placement

TL;DR

This paper estimates the computational resources and template placement strategies needed for matched filtering searches of gravitational waves from inspiraling compact binaries across various detectors and configurations.

Contribution

It provides detailed estimates of templates, computational power, and storage requirements for gravitational wave searches using second post-Newtonian waveforms, serving as benchmarks for future methods.

Findings

Initial LIGO requires about 10^11 flops for data analysis.

VIRGO needs approximately 5*10^12 flops, and TAMA requires 1.5*10^11 real numbers for storage.

Advanced LIGO will need around 8*10^11 flops for data processing.

Abstract

We estimate the number of templates, computational power, and storage required for a one-step matched filtering search for gravitational waves from inspiraling compact binaries. These estimates should serve as benchmarks for the evaluation of more sophisticated strategies such as hierarchical searches. We use waveform templates based on the second post-Newtonian approximation for binaries composed of nonspinning compact bodies in circular orbits. We present estimates for six noise curves: LIGO (three configurations), VIRGO, GEO600, and TAMA. To search for binaries with components more massive than 0.2M_o while losing no more than 10% of events due to coarseness of template spacing, initial LIGO will require about 1*10^11 flops (floating point operations per second) for data analysis to keep up with data acquisition. This is several times higher than estimated in previous work by Owen, in part because of the improved family of templates and in part because we use more realistic (higher) sampling rates. Enhanced LIGO, GEO600, and TAMA will require computational power similar to initial LIGO. Advanced LIGO will require 8*10^11 flops, and VIRGO will require 5*10^12 flops. If the templates are stored rather than generated as needed, storage requirements range from 1.5*10^11 real numbers for TAMA to 6*10^14 for VIRGO. We also sketch and discuss an algorithm for placing the templates in the parameter space.