Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
1997-02-25
Phys.Rev.D57:2101-2116,1998
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
18 pages, LaTeX, 12 PostScript figures included using psfig. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevD.57.2101
We investigate the computational requirements for all-sky, all-frequency searches for gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars, using archived data from interferometric gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO. These sources are expected to be weak, so the optimal strategy involves coherent accumulaton of signal-to-noise using Fourier transforms of long stretches of data (months to years). Earth-motion-induced Doppler shifts, and intrinsic pulsar spindown, will reduce the narrow-band signal-to-noise by spreading power across many frequency bins; therefore, it is necessary to correct for these effects before performing the Fourier transform. The corrections can be implemented by a parametrized model, in which one does a search over a discrete set of parameter values. We define a metric on this parameter space, which can be used to determine the optimal spacing between points in a search; the metric is used to compute the number of independent parameter-space points Np that must be searched, as a function of observation time T. The number Np(T) depends on the maximum gravitational wave frequency and the minimum spindown age tau=f/(df/dt) that the search can detect. The signal-to-noise ratio required, in order to have 99% confidence of a detection, also depends on Np(T). We find that for an all-sky, all-frequency search lasting T=10^7 s, this detection threshhold is at a level of 4 to 5 times h(3/yr), where h(3/yr) is the corresponding 99% confidence threshhold if one knows in advance the pulsar position and spin period.
Brady Patrick R.
Creighton Teviet
Cutler C. C.
Schutz Bernard F.
No associations
LandOfFree
Searching for periodic sources with LIGO does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Searching for periodic sources with LIGO, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Searching for periodic sources with LIGO will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-75145