Searching for gravitational waves from binary coalescence

Abstract

We describe the implementation of a search for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences in LIGO and Virgo data. This all-sky, all-time, multi-detector search for binary coalescence has been used to search data taken in recent LIGO and Virgo runs. The search is built around a matched filter analysis of the data, augmented by numerous signal consistency tests designed to distinguish artifacts of non-Gaussian detector noise from potential detections. We demonstrate the search performance using Gaussian noise and data from the fifth LIGO science run and demonstrate that the signal consistency tests are capable of mitigating the effect of non-Gaussian noise and providing a sensitivity comparable to that achieved in Gaussian noise.