CaltechAUTHORS
Published June 25, 2012 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Likelihood-ratio ranking of gravitational-wave candidates in a non-Gaussian background

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
  • 2. ROR icon University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
  • 3. ROR icon University of the Balearic Islands
  • 4. ROR icon Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
  • 5. ROR icon University of Mississippi
  • 6. ROR icon Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory
  • 7. ROR icon University of California, San Francisco
  • 8. ROR icon Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics
  • 9. ROR icon Leibniz University Hannover
  • 10. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Abstract

We describe a general approach to detection of transient gravitational-wave signals in the presence of non-Gaussian background noise. We prove that under quite general conditions, the ratio of the likelihood of observed data to contain a signal to the likelihood of it being a noise fluctuation provides optimal ranking for the candidate events found in an experiment. The likelihood-ratio ranking allows us to combine different kinds of data into a single analysis. We apply the general framework to the problem of unifying the results of independent experiments and the problem of accounting for non-Gaussian artifacts in the searches for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence in LIGO data. We show analytically and confirm through simulations that in both cases applying the likelihood-ratio ranking results in an improved analysis.

Additional Information

© 2012 American Physical Society. Received 20 February 2012; published 25 June 2012. Authors would like to thank Ilya Mandel and Jolien Creighton for many fruitful discussions and helpful suggestions. This work has been supported by NSF Grant Nos. PHY-0600953 and PHY-0923409. D.K. was supported from the Max Planck Gesellschaft. L. P. and R.V. was supported by LIGO laboratory. J. B. was supported by the Spanish MICINN FPA2010-16495 grant and the Conselleria dEconomia Hisenda i Innovacio of the Govern de les Illes Balears. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation and operates under cooperative agreement PHY-0757058.

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Published - Biswas2012p18797Phys_Rev_D.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
32443
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20120713-161758211

Funding

NSF
PHY-0600953
NSF
PHY-0923409
Max Planck Gesellschaft
LIGO Laboratory
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) (Spain)
FPA2010-16495
Conselleria d'Economia Hisenda i Innovaciό of the Govern de les Illes Balears
NSF
PHY-0757058

Dates

Created
2012-07-16
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-09
Created from EPrint's last_modified field