No Arabic abstract
We describe the extension to multiple datasets of a coherent method for the search of continuous gravitational wave signals, based on the computation of 5-vectors. In particular, we show how to coherently combine different datasets belonging to the same detector or to different detectors. In the latter case the coherent combination is the way to have the maximum increase in signal-to-noise ratio. If the datasets belong to the same detector the advantage comes mainly from the properties of a quantity called {it coherence} which is helpful (in both cases, in fact) in rejecting false candidates. The method has been tested searching for simulated signals injected in Gaussian noise and the results of the simulations are discussed.
Future space borne gravitational wave detectors will require a precise definition of calibration signals to ensure the achievement of their design sensitivity. The careful design of the test signals plays a key role in the correct understanding and characterisation of these instruments. In that sense, methods achieving optimal experiment designs must be considered as complementary to the parameter estimation methods being used to determine the parameters describing the system. The relevance of experiment design is particularly significant for the LISA Pathfinder mission, which will spend most of its operation time performing experiments to characterise key technologies for future space borne gravitational wave observatories. Here we propose a framework to derive the optimal signals ---in terms of minimum parameter uncertainty--- to be injected to these instruments during its calibration phase. We compare our results with an alternative numerical algorithm which achieves an optimal input signal by iteratively improving an initial guess. We show agreement of both approaches when applied to the LISA Pathfinder case.
The Omicron software is a tool developed to perform a multi-resolution time-frequency analysis of data from gravitational-wave detectors: the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA detectors. Omicron generates spectrograms from whitened data streams, offering a visual representation of transient detector noises and gravitational-wave events. In addition, these events can be parameterized with an optimized resolution. They can be written to disk to conduct offline noise characterization and gravitational-wave event validation studies. Omicron is optimized to process, in parallel, thousands of data streams recorded by gravitational-wave detectors. The Omicron software plays an important role in vetting gravitational-wave detection candidates and characterization of transient noise.
Coincident observations with gravitational wave (GW) detectors and other astronomical instruments are in the focus of the experiments with the network of LIGO, Virgo and GEO detectors. They will become a necessary part of the future GW astronomy as the next generation of advanced detectors comes online. The success of such joint observations directly depends on the source localization capabilities of the GW detectors. In this paper we present studies of the sky localization of transient sources with the future advanced detector networks and describe their fundamental properties. By reconstructing sky coordinates of ad hoc signals injected into simulated detector noise we study the accuracy of the source localization and its dependence on the strength of injected signals, waveforms and network configurations.
In this paper we present the results of the first low frequency all-sky search of continuous gravitational wave signals conducted on Virgo VSR2 and VSR4 data. The search covered the full sky, a frequency range between 20 Hz and 128 Hz with a range of spin-down between $-1.0 times 10^{-10}$ Hz/s and $+1.5 times 10^{-11}$ Hz/s, and was based on a hierarchical approach. The starting point was a set of short Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT), of length 8192 seconds, built from the calibrated strain data. Aggressive data cleaning, both in the time and frequency domains, has been done in order to remove, as much as possible, the effect of disturbances of instrumental origin. On each dataset a number of candidates has been selected, using the FrequencyHough transform in an incoherent step. Only coincident candidates among VSR2 and VSR4 have been examined in order to strongly reduce the false alarm probability, and the most significant candidates have been selected. Selected candidates have been subject to a follow-up by constructing a new set of longer FFTs followed by a further incoherent analysis, still based on the FrequencyHough transform. No evidence for continuous gravitational wave signals was found, therefore we have set a population-based joint VSR2-VSR4 90$%$ confidence level upper limit on the dimensionless gravitational wave strain in the frequency range between 20 Hz and 128 Hz. This is the first all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves conducted, on data of ground-based interferometric detectors, at frequencies below 50 Hz. We set upper limits in the range between about $10^{-24}$ and $2times 10^{-23}$ at most frequencies. Our upper limits on signal strain show an improvement of up to a factor of $sim$2 with respect to the results of previous all-sky searches at frequencies below $80~mathrm{Hz}$.
Space-based gravitational wave detectors based on the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) design operate by synthesizing one or more interferometers from fringe velocity measurements generated by changes in the light travel time between three spacecraft in a special set of drag-free heliocentric orbits. These orbits determine the inclination of the synthesized interferometer with respect to the ecliptic plane. Once these spacecraft are placed in their orbits, the orientation of the interferometers at any future time is fixed by Keplers Laws based on the initial orientation of the spacecraft constellation, which may be freely chosen. Over the course of a full solar orbit, the initial orientation determines a set of locations on the sky were the detector has greatest sensitivity to gravitational waves as well as a set of locations where nulls in the detector response fall. By artful choice of the initial orientation, we can choose to optimize or suppress the antennas sensitivity to sources whose location may be known in advance (e.g., the Galactic Center or globular clusters).