Enabling high confidence detections of gravitational-wave bursts

Abstract

With the advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors taking observations the detection of gravitational waves is expected within the next few years. Extracting astrophysical information from gravitational wave detections is a well-posed problem and thoroughly studied when detailed models for the waveforms are available. However, one motivation for the field of gravitational wave astronomy is the potential for new discoveries. Recognizing and characterizing unanticipated signals requires data analysis techniques which do not depend on theoretical predictions for the gravitational waveform. Past searches for short-duration un-modeled gravitational wave signals have been hampered by transient noise artifacts, or "glitches," in the detectors. In some cases, even high signal-to-noise simulated astrophysical signals have proven difficult to distinguish from glitches, so that essentially any plausible signal could be detected with at most 2-3 $\sigma$ level confidence. We have put forth the BayesWave algorithm to differentiate between generic gravitational wave transients and glitches, and to provide robust waveform reconstruction and characterization of the astrophysical signals. Here we study BayesWave's capabilities for rejecting glitches while assigning high confidence to detection candidates through analytic approximations to the Bayesian evidence. Analytic results are tested with numerical experiments by adding simulated gravitational wave transient signals to LIGO data collected between 2009 and 2010 and found to be in good agreement.

15 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PRD

References in corpus (13)

• LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
• Robust parameter estimation for compact binaries with ground-based gravitational-wave observations using the LALInference software library
• Use and Abuse of the Fisher Information Matrix in the Assessment of Gravitational-Wave Parameter-Estimation Prospects
• BayesWave: Bayesian Inference for Gravitational Wave Bursts and Instrument Glitches
• Dynamic temperature selection for parallel-tempering in Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations
• Coherent method for detection of gravitational wave bursts
• Toward faithful templates for non-spinning binary black holes using the effective-one-body approach
• BayesLine: Bayesian Inference for Spectral Estimation of Gravitational Wave Detector Noise
• Tests of Bayesian Model Selection Techniques for Gravitational Wave Astronomy
• Coherent network analysis technique for discriminating gravitational-wave bursts from instrumental noise
• Localization of short duration gravitational-wave transients with the early advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors
• Leveraging waveform complexity for confident detection of gravitational waves
• Detecting gravitational-wave transients at five sigma: a hierarchical approach

Cited by in corpus (39)

• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run
• Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• Observation of Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a $2.5\text{-}4.5M_{\odot }$ Compact Object and a Neutron Star
• Observing gravitational-wave transient GW150914 with minimal assumptions
• GWTC-2.1: Deep Extended Catalog of Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• The BayesWave analysis pipeline in the era of gravitational wave observations
• Inferring the post-merger gravitational wave emission from binary neutron star coalescences
• Distribution of Effective Spins and Masses of Binary Black Holes from the LIGO and Virgo O1-O3a Observing Runs
• All-sky search for short gravitational-wave bursts in the first Advanced LIGO run
• All-sky search for short gravitational-wave bursts in the second Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo run
• Observing the post-merger signal of GW170817-like events with improved gravitational-wave detectors
• Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• A morphology-independent data analysis method for detecting and characterizing gravitational wave echoes
• A morphology-independent search for gravitational wave echoes in data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• GWTC-4.0: Updating the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog with Observations from the First Part of the Fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Observing Run
• Parameter estimation for gravitational-wave bursts with the BayesWave pipeline
• Denoising of gravitational wave signals via dictionary learning algorithms
• Gravitational-wave constraints on the GWTC-2 events by measuring the tidal deformability and the spin-induced quadrupole moment
• GW241011 and GW241110: Exploring Binary Formation and Fundamental Physics with Asymmetric, High-Spin Black Hole Coalescence
• Bayesian reconstruction of gravitational wave bursts using chirplets
• Testing Lorentz Invariance of Gravity in the Standard Model Extension with GWTC-3
• A morphology-independent test of the mixed polarization content of gravitational wave signals from compact binary coalescences
• Total-variation methods for gravitational-wave denoising: performance tests on Advanced LIGO data
• Gravitational wave inference on a numerical-relativity simulation of a black hole merger beyond general relativity
• Gravitational wave detection without boot straps: a Bayesian approach
• Classification of the core-collapse supernova explosion mechanism with learned dictionaries
• Assessing and Mitigating the Impact of Glitches on Gravitational-Wave Parameter Estimation: a Model Agnostic Approach
• Searches for Mass-Asymmetric Compact Binary Coalescence Events using Neural Networks in the LIGO/Virgo Third Observation Period
• Multipole tidal effects in the post-Newtonian gravitational-wave phase of compact binary coalescences
• Robust inference of gravitational wave source parameters in the presence of noise transients using normalizing flows
• Bayesian Reconstruction of Gravitational-wave Signals from Binary Black Holes with Nonzero Eccentricities
• Follow-up analyses of the binary-neutron-star signals GW170817 and GW190425 by using post-Newtonian waveform models
• Bayesian Inference Analysis of Unmodelled Gravitational-Wave Transients
• Enhancing gravitational-wave burst detection confidence in expanded detector networks with the BayesWave pipeline
• Posterior predictive checking for gravitational-wave detection with pulsar timing arrays: II. Posterior predictive distributions and pseudo Bayes factors
• Impact of noise transients on gravitational-wave burst detection efficiency of the BayesWave pipeline with multi-detector networks
• Probing neutron stars with the full pre-merger and post-merger gravitational wave signal from binary coalescences
• Multi-detector characterization of gravitational-wave burst tensor polarizations with the BayesWave algorithm