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The Hough transform search for continuous gravitational waves

Badri Krishnan·Alicia M. Sintes·M. A. Papa·Bernard F. Schutz·Sergio Frasca·Cristiano Palomba
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Abstract

This paper describes an incoherent method to search for continuous gravitational waves based on the Hough transform, a well known technique used for detecting patterns in digital images. We apply the Hough transform to detect patterns in the time-frequency plane of the data produced by an earth-based gravitational wave detector. Two different flavors of searches will be considered, depending on the type of input to the Hough transform: either Fourier transforms of the detector data or the output of a coherent matched-filtering type search. We present the technical details for implementing the Hough transform algorithm for both kinds of searches, their statistical properties, and their sensitivities.

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Badri Krishnan, Alicia M. Sintes, M. A. Papa, Bernard F. Schutz, Sergio Frasca, Cristiano Palomba. 2004-10-20. The Hough transform search for continuous gravitational waves. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.70.082001

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