Last Modified: 2002 October 21
Charlie Torres / charlie@phys.utb.edu
Development of routines for the analysis of data from LIGO and other interferometric gravitational wave telescopes is the major area of research for the UTB relativity group. Because of the extreme faintness of gravitational wave signals, the data from even the most sophisiticated detectors will require a specialized regimen of analysis to search for signals of specific types in the sea of noise. The principle types of searches are
Data analysis routines to search for these sources are being developed primarily by the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee and the University of Cardiff LSC groups. The group at UTB is making a small contribution to this search, however. We are contributing the chi-squared veto, which will help distinguish between true binary inspiral signals and noise that looks somewhat like a binary inspiral signal. More information on the signals themselves can be found in our source-modelling section.
UTB is playing a lead role in the analysis of these signals. In addition to the link above, outlining the theory behind the searches, our contributions to this effort can be found in the LAL Code Development section of our research activities section.
The most notable source of periodic gravitational waves is a rapidly rotating neutron star with a non-axisymmetric mass distribution. Due to the long observation times required to build up enough signal-to-noise ratio and the frequency modulations caused by the earth's rotational and orbital motion, searching for periodic sources is one of the most challenging data analysis problems facing experimenters today. Although this is an extremely interesting problem, UTB is not directly involved in research in this area. Major research efforts on periodic sources are currently within the data analysis groups at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI) in Potsdam, Germany.
UTB is currently involved in the development of code for distributed (multiprocessor) searches for gravitational waves from unmodelled sources.