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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Establishing the significance of continuous gravitational-wave detections from known pulsars
AU - Isi, Maximiliano
AU - Mastrogiovanni, Simone
AU - Pitkin, Matthew
AU - Piccinni, Ornella
N1 - © 2021 American Physical Society
PY - 2020/12/28
Y1 - 2020/12/28
N2 - We present a method for assigning a statistical significance to detection candidates in targeted searches for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars, without assuming the detector noise is Gaussian and stationary. We take advantage of the expected Doppler phase modulation of the signal induced by Earth’s orbital motion, as well as the amplitude modulation induced by Earth’s spin, to effectively blind the search to real astrophysical signals from a given location in the sky. We use this “sky shifting” to produce a large number of noise-only data realizations to empirically estimate the background of a search and assign detection significances, in a similar fashion to the use of time slides in searches for compact binaries. We demonstrate the potential of this approach by means of simulated signals, as well as hardware injections into real detector data. In a study of simulated signals in non-Gaussian noise, we find that our method outperforms another common strategy for evaluating detection significance. We thus demonstrate that this and similar techniques have the potential to enable a first confident detection of continuous gravitational waves.
AB - We present a method for assigning a statistical significance to detection candidates in targeted searches for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars, without assuming the detector noise is Gaussian and stationary. We take advantage of the expected Doppler phase modulation of the signal induced by Earth’s orbital motion, as well as the amplitude modulation induced by Earth’s spin, to effectively blind the search to real astrophysical signals from a given location in the sky. We use this “sky shifting” to produce a large number of noise-only data realizations to empirically estimate the background of a search and assign detection significances, in a similar fashion to the use of time slides in searches for compact binaries. We demonstrate the potential of this approach by means of simulated signals, as well as hardware injections into real detector data. In a study of simulated signals in non-Gaussian noise, we find that our method outperforms another common strategy for evaluating detection significance. We thus demonstrate that this and similar techniques have the potential to enable a first confident detection of continuous gravitational waves.
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.102.123027
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.102.123027
M3 - Journal article
VL - 102
JO - Physical Review D
JF - Physical Review D
SN - 1550-7998
M1 - 123027
ER -