Detection of GW bursts with chirplet-like template families

Abstract

Gravitational wave (GW) burst detection algorithms typically rely on the hypothesis that the burst signal is ‘locally stationary’, that is with slow variations of its 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 wavelets 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.