SEMINAR

                                                                                                                     
Thursday 15/1/2004, h. 11.00

LNL Meeting Room


Laura Cadonati
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
LIGO Scientific Collaboration

Coherent coincident analysis of LIGO burst candidates

Abstract: The search for unmodeled gravitational wave bursts in LIGO relies on coincident
detection in multiple interferometers. As no assumption is made about the event waveform or
duration, the analysis pipeline requires loose coincidence in time, frequency and amplitude.
Confidence in the resulting events and their waveform consistency is established through a
time-domain coherent analysis: the "r-statistic test". This talk introduces the burst analysis
pipeline and presents a performance study of the post-coincidence steps, applied to
lowthreshold/high-false-rate background events from the LIGO S2 playground dataset.
Particular emphasis will be given to the r-statistic test, its ability to suppress the background
false rate, and its efficiency at detecting simulated bursts of different waveforms close to the
S2 sensitivity curve.

A. Ortolan