• DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.181102
• Corpus ID: 40560957

Exploiting large-scale correlations to detect continuous gravitational waves.

@article{Pletsch2009ExploitingLC,
  title={Exploiting large-scale correlations to detect continuous gravitational waves.},
  author={H. J. Pletsch and Bruce Allen},
  journal={Physical review letters},
  year={2009},
  volume={103 18},
  pages={
          181102
        }
}

• H. Pletsch, B. Allen
• Published 31 May 2009
• Physics
• Physical review letters

Fully coherent searches (over realistic ranges of parameter space and year-long observation times) for unknown sources of continuous gravitational waves are computationally prohibitive. Less expensive hierarchical searches divide the data into shorter segments which are analyzed coherently, then detection statistics from different segments are combined incoherently. The novel method presented here solves the long-standing problem of how best to do the incoherent combination. The optimal solution exploits large-scale parameter-space correlations in the coherent detection statistic. Application to simulated data shows dramatic sensitivity improvements compared with previously available (ad hoc) methods, increasing the spatial volume probed by more than 2 orders of magnitude at lower computational cost.