A semicoherent resampling method for long-transient gravitational wave searches with applications to subsolar-mass primordial black-hole binaries

Abstract

Resampling removes the modeled phase evolution of a frequency-evolving signal, transforming it into a monochromatic one. We introduce a novel implementation for long-transient gravitational-wave searches that evaluates the Fourier spectrum of the resampled data using a type-I non-uniform fast Fourier transform (NUFFT). This implementation can be up to two orders of magnitude faster than some previous implementations, depending on coherent length, sampling rate, and desired accuracy. To demonstrate its application, we benchmark the method with a semicoherent search for long-duration inspiral signals from subsolar-mass primordial black hole binaries. For a search over $40$--$60\mathrm{Hz}$ and chirp masses of $5\times 10^{-4}$--$10^{-1}{M}_{\odot }$, with a coherent duration of $30\mathrm{s}$ and a realistic computing cost, the estimated horizon distance exceeds the Galactic Center for all of the parameter space considered and exceeds Andromeda for chirp masses above approximately $2\times 10^{-2}{M}_{\odot }$. These results establish NUFFT-based resampling as a computationally efficient and broadly applicable approach for searches for modeled, frequency-evolving gravitational-wave signals.

12 pages, 9 figures