Detection of GW bursts with chirplet-like template families

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Abstract:: Gravitational Wave (GW) burst detection algorithms typically rely on the hypothesis that the burst signal is ``locally stationary'', that is it changes slowly with frequency. Under this assumption, the signal can be decomposed into a small number of wavelets with constant frequency. This justifies the use of a family of sine-Gaussian templates in the Omega pipeline, one of the algorithms used in LIGO-Virgo burst searches. However there are plausible scenarios where the burst frequency evolves rapidly, such as in the merger phase of a binary black hole and/or neutron star coalescence. In those cases, the local stationarity of sine-Gaussians induces performance losses, due to the mismatch between the template and the actual signal. We propose an extension of the Omega pipeline based on chirplet-like templates. Chirplets incorporate an additional parameter, the chirp rate, to control the frequency variation. In this paper, we show that the Omega pipeline can easily be extended to include a chirplet template bank. We illustrate the method on a simulated data set, with a family of phenomenological binary black-hole coalescence waveforms embedded into Gaussian LIGO/Virgo-like noise. Chirplet-like templates result in an enhancement of the measured signal-to-noise ratio.

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LIGO Document P1000054-v2