Methods for Detecting Gravitational Waves from mini-Extreme-Mass-Ratio Inspirals II: A Spectral-Leakage-Aware Framework

Abstract

Mini-Extreme-Mass-Ratio Inspirals (mini-EMRIs), comprising a sub-solar exotic compact object (such as a primordial black hole or boson star) orbiting a much heavier stellar-origin or exotic compact object, represent key targets for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors to probe the early universe and the nature of dark matter. However, detecting such systems, which could spend hours to years in LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA data, poses a computational challenge to standard matched-filtering methods. However, semi-coherent methods are constrained by the quasi-monochromatic assumption, which restricts the coherence time to avoid spectral leakage caused by frequency evolution. In this work, we extend the development of our method, $\Sigma$Track, to the regime in which the quasi-monochromatic approximation is relaxed, in two ways. First, we establish an analytical model for the spectral leakage, extending the validity of conventional analyses beyond the quasi-monochromatic regime. Second, we propose the $\Sigma R$ statistic -- a novel detection metric formed by a weighted summation of power ratios -- which effectively recovers the signal energy dispersed across adjacent frequency bins. Building on this framework, we further introduce an innovative frequency-layered search strategy that dynamically optimizes the coherence time across the observation band. We benchmark our method against a globally optimized Hough transform pipeline using a fiducial mini-EMRI signal from a binary with masses $(1.5, 10^{-5})\,M_\odot$. The results demonstrate that our framework achieves an order-of-magnitude enhancement in the effective detection volume, significantly expanding the horizon for discovering mini-EMRIs and sub-solar exotic compact objects with ground-based gravitational wave detectors. This approach can be similarly applied to EMRI searches for future space-based gravitational wave detectors.