arXiv subjects

Richard N. George

Publications and source records attributed to Richard N. George.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Method to get Better Sky Maps in a GstLAL Low-Latency Analysis

Modeled gravitational wave searches correlate the strain data with a bank of gravitational wave template waveforms to make detections of gravitational wave candidates, and these results are processed by downstream tools to calculate the likely sky location and distance of the source of the candidates. This is crucial for multi-messenger efforts, since it informs astronomers where to point their telescopes to facilitate electromagnetic follow-up of the gravitational wave candidates. We present a novel method to improve the low-latency results of the GstLAL gravitational wave search pipeline, and thus improving sky location estimates of low-latency candidates. This method involves ingesting the GstLAL low-latency results, and performing a small targeted hierarchical search to recover the candidates with more accurate parameters, in a medium-latency timescale (few seconds to five minutes). To test our method, we perform a GstLAL low-latency analysis on forty days of data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA, and show that our method improves the GstLAL results by 5.38% and the subsequent sky location results by 16.75% on average. In addition to this increase in precision, we also show that these results are more accurate as compared to the GstLAL results. This method has been adopted by GstLAL for the fourth observing run.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2026

GstLAL O4 Online Results Paper

Gravitational-wave observations of merging binary neutron stars and black holes are now routinely made by detectors in the Advanced LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA network. Neutron star binary systems may also produce detectable electromagnetic and particle emission over times scales ranging from seconds to years. Real-time gravitational-wave searches play a central role in enabling time-critical electromagnetic and/or neutrino follow-up observations. During the fourth observing run (O4) of the Advanced LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA network, multiple real-time searches operated continuously to identify candidate gravitational-wave events and publicly disseminate information about these discoveries. Here, the performance and results of the GstLAL real-time analysis are reported. The analysis is designed to identify candidates with low latency, high detection efficiency, and sustained operational uptime over long observing periods. Across O4, it produced initial candidate uploads with a median latency of 15.8 s while maintaining an effective uptime of 98% during the first two parts of the observing run. During the run, the analysis contributed to 250 candidates classified as astrophysically plausible, provided the first upload for 222 of these, and was the sole contributor for 75. Among Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog events with a false-alarm rate below one per year, 88% were identified as significant in low latency and promoted for expert vetting and public dissemination. The low-latency astrophysical classifications agreed with the final catalog classifications for 93% of the events considered.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

How Many Times Should We Matched Filter Gravitational Wave Data? A Comparison of GstLAL's Online and Offline Performance

Searches for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences employ a process called matched filtering, in which gravitational wave strain data is cross-correlated against a bank of waveform templates. Data from every observing run of the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaboration is typically analyzed in this way twice, first in a low-latency mode in which gravitational wave candidates are identified in near-real time, and later in a high-latency mode. Such high-latency analyses have traditionally been considered more sensitive, since background data from the full observing run is available for assigning significance to all candidates, as well as more robust, since they do not need to worry about keeping up with live data. In this work, we present a novel technique to use the matched filtering data products from a low-latency analysis and re-process them by assigning significances in a high-latency way, effectively removing the need to perform matched filtering a second time. To demonstrate the efficacy of our method, we analyze 38 days of LIGO and Virgo data from the third observing run (O3) using the GstLAL pipeline, and show that our method is as sensitive and reliable as a traditional high-latency analysis. Since matched filtering represents the vast majority of computing time for a traditional analysis, our method greatly reduces the time and computational burden required to produce the same results as a traditional high-latency analysis. Consequently, it has already been adopted by GstLAL for the fourth observing run (O4) of the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaboration.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

New Methods for Offline GstLAL Analyses

In this work, we present new methods implemented in the GstLAL offline gravitational wave search. These include a technique to reuse the matched filtering data products from a GstLAL online analysis, which hugely reduces the time and computational resources required to obtain offline results; a technique to combine these results with a separate search for heavier black hole mergers, enabling detections from a larger set of gravitational wave sources; changes to the likelihood ratio which increases the sensitivity of the analysis; and two separate changes to the background estimation, allowing more precise significance estimation of gravitational wave candidates. Some of these methods increase the sensitivity of the analysis, whereas others correct previous mis-estimations of sensitivity by eliminating false positives. These methods have been adopted for GstLAL's offline results during the fourth observing run of LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA (O4). To test these new methods, we perform an offline analysis over one chunk of O3 data, lasting from May 12 19:36:42 UTC 2019 to May 21 14:45:08 UTC 2019, and compare it with previous GstLAL results over the same period of time. We show that cumulatively these methods afford around a 50% - 100% increase in sensitivity in the highest mass space, while simultaneously increasing the reliability of results, and making them more reusable and computationally cheaper.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

GW070605: An Undisclosed Binary Neutron Star Hardware Injection in LIGO's Fifth Science Run

The authors wished to document the sensitivity improvement that has been contributed to the GW detection rate by detection algorithm research and development efforts, and set about re-analyzing S5 and S6 to determine the sensitive time-volumes of a modern pipeline and compare them to that of analysis algorithms of the day. To our surprise, this effort led to the discovery of GW070605, what at first appeared to be a previously unreported high significance binary neutron star merger at a time when only the Livingston detector (L1) was operating -- data that could not have been analyzed and a signal that could not have been discovered previously because the algorithms of the day required coincidence between two or more detectors. GW070605's end time occurs in LIGO's L1 detector at 2007-06-05 18:37:02 UTC, and is estimated to be a merger with component masses of 1.82$M_\odot$ and 1.24$M_\odot$. The GstLAL detection algorithm estimates that noise processes produce false positives at least as significant as GW070605 at a rate of $8.6\times10^{-10}$ per year. Disappointingly, subsequent investigations revealed the presence of a previously undocumented hardware injection in the L1 detector's Y arm end test mass' excitation channel, whose time and properties match that of GW070605. The injection does not appear in the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center list of hardware injections. We determined that while there is no sensitivity improvement between GstLAL and previous algorithms at the null-result threshold, there is marked improvement at above null-result thresholds; specifically, an approximately 55-times detection rate increase from initial-era algorithms at a FAR threshold of 1 per 7000 years.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2025

Template bank for sub solar mass compact binary mergers in the fourth observing run of Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and KAGRA

Matched-filtering searches for gravitational-wave signals from compact binary mergers employ template banks which are a collection of modeled waveforms described by unique intrinsic parameters. We present two banks designed for low-latency and archive sub-solar mass (SSM) searches in data from the fourth observing run of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA, and demonstrate the efficacy of the banks via simulated signals. Further, we introduce a set of modifications to the geometric, manifold algorithm that allow the method to work for exceedingly low component masses necessary for SSM bank production. The archive search bank contains a total of $3,452,006$ templates, and covers a mass parameter space of $0.2$ to $10\ M_\odot$ in the larger component and $0.2$ to $1.0\ M_\odot$ in the smaller component, the spin parameter space of $-0.9$ to $0.9$ for masses above $0.5$ $M_\odot$ and $-0.1$ to $0.1$ for masses below $0.5$ $M_\odot$, and the mass ratio parameter space of $1$ to $10$. The PSD used was from a week of the first half of the fourth observing run of Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and KAGRA, and the low frequency cutoff was set to $45$ Hz with a maximum waveform duration of $128$ seconds. The bank simulations performed using SBank have shown that the banks presented in this paper have sufficient efficacy for use in their respective searches.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Searching for asymmetric and heavily precessing Binary Black Holes in the gravitational wave data from the LIGO and Virgo third Observing Run

Leveraging the features of the GstLAL pipeline, we present the results of a matched filtering search for asymmetric binary black hole systems with heavily misaligned spins in LIGO and Virgo data taken during the third observing run. Our target systems show strong imprints of precession whereas current searches have non-optimal sensitivity in detecting them. After measuring the sensitivity improvement brought by our search over standard spin-aligned searches, we report the detection of 30 gravitational wave events already discovered in the latest version of the Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog. However, we do not find any additional significant gravitational wave candidates. Our results allow us to place an upper limit of $R_{90\%} = 0.28^{+0.33}_{-0.04}\;\; \mathrm{Gpc^{-3}yr^{-1}}$ on the merger rate of a hypothetical subpopulation of asymmetric, heavily precessing signals, not identified by other searches. Since our upper limit is consistent with the latest rate estimates from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration, our findings rule out the existence of a yet-to-be-discovered population of precessing binaries.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Searching for gravitational-wave signals from precessing black hole binaries with the GstLAL pipeline

Precession in Binary Black Holes (BBH) is caused by the failure of the Black Hole spins to be aligned and its study can open up new perspectives in gravitational waves (GW) astronomy, providing, among other advancements, a precise measure of distance and an accurate characterization of the BBH spins. However, detecting precessing signals is a highly non-trivial task, as standard matched filtering pipelines for GW searches are built on many assumptions that do not hold in the precessing case. This work details the upgrades made to the GstLAL pipeline to facilitate the search for precessing BBH signals. The implemented changes in the search statistics and in the signal consistency test are then described in detail. The performance of the upgraded pipeline is evaluated through two extensive searches of precessing signals, targeting two different regions in the mass space, and the consistency of the results is examined. Additionally, the benefits of the upgrades are assessed by comparing the sensitive volume of the precessing searches with two corresponding traditional aligned-spin searches. While no significant sensitivity improvement is observed for precessing binaries with mass ratio $q\lesssim 6$, a volume increase of up to 100\% is attainable for heavily asymmetric systems with largely misaligned spins. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the primary cause of degraded performance in an aligned-spin search targeting precessing signals is not a poor signal-to-noise-ratio recovery but rather the failure of the $ξ^2$ signal-consistency test. Our work paves the way for a large-scale search for precessing signals, which could potentially result in exciting future detections.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

When to Point Your Telescopes: Gravitational Wave Trigger Classification for Real-Time Multi-Messenger Followup Observations

We develop a robust and self-consistent framework to extract and classify gravitational wave candidates from noisy data, for the purpose of assisting in real-time multi-messenger follow-ups during LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's fourth observing run~(O4). Our formalism implements several improvements to the low latency calculation of the probability of astrophysical origin~(\PASTRO{}), so as to correctly account for various factors such as the sensitivity change between observing runs, and the deviation of the recovered template waveform from the true gravitational wave signal that can strongly bias said calculation. We demonstrate the high accuracy with which our new formalism recovers and classifies gravitational wave triggers, by analyzing replay data from previous observing runs injected with simulated sources of different categories. We show that these improvements enable the correct identification of the majority of simulated sources, many of which would have otherwise been misclassified. We carry out the aforementioned analysis by implementing our formalism through the \GSTLAL{} search pipeline even though it can be used in conjunction with potentially any matched filtering pipeline. Armed with robust and self-consistent \PASTRO{} values, the \GSTLAL{} pipeline can be expected to provide accurate source classification information for assisting in multi-messenger follow-up observations to gravitational wave alerts sent out during O4.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Performance of the low-latency GstLAL inspiral search towards LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA's fourth observing run

GstLAL is a stream-based matched-filtering search pipeline aiming at the prompt discovery of gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences such as the mergers of black holes and neutron stars. Over the past three observation runs by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA (LVK) collaboration, the GstLAL search pipeline has participated in several tens of gravitational wave discoveries. The fourth observing run (O4) is set to begin in May 2023 and is expected to see the discovery of many new and interesting gravitational wave signals which will inform our understanding of astrophysics and cosmology. We describe the current configuration of the GstLAL low-latency search and show its readiness for the upcoming observation run by presenting its performance on a mock data challenge. The mock data challenge includes 40 days of LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, and Virgo strain data along with an injection campaign in order to fully characterize the performance of the search. We find an improved performance in terms of detection rate and significance estimation as compared to that observed in the O3 online analysis. The improvements are attributed to several incremental advances in the likelihood ratio ranking statistic computation and the method of background estimation.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Rogue echoes from exotic compact objects

Binary systems containing exotic compact objects may emit repeated bursts of gravitational waves (GWs) following coalescence. Such GW echoes would provide a clear signature of new physics, but searches for them have not yielded a convincing detection. Here we argue that the typical time delay between a GW event and its echoes is much greater than generally expected, due to long propagation times through objects that mimic black holes. We provide a simple recipe for computing the time delay and several examples. These time delays can be billions of years, resulting in rogue echoes that are not correlated with GW events and evade all current constraints. They would be detectable only by searches for individual echoes or GW bursts.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Efficient Gravitational Wave Template Bank Generation with Differentiable Waveforms

The most sensitive search pipelines for gravitational waves from compact binary mergers use matched filters to extract signals from the noisy data stream coming from gravitational wave detectors. Matched-filter searches require banks of template waveforms covering the physical parameter space of the binary system. Unfortunately, template bank construction can be a time-consuming task. Here we present a new method for efficiently generating template banks that utilizes automatic differentiation to calculate the parameter space metric. Principally, we demonstrate that automatic differentiation enables accurate computation of the metric for waveforms currently used in search pipelines, whilst being computationally cheap. Additionally, by combining random template placement and a Monte Carlo method for evaluating the fraction of the parameter space that is currently covered, we show that search-ready template banks for frequency-domain waveforms can be rapidly generated. Finally, we argue that differentiable waveforms offer a pathway to accelerating stochastic placement algorithms. We implement all our methods into an easy-to-use Python package based on the jax framework, diffbank, to allow the community to easily take advantage of differentiable waveforms for future searches.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

Dimensionally Reduced Waveforms for Spin-Induced Quadrupole Searches

We present highly accurate, dimensionally-reduced gravitational waveforms for binary inspirals whose components have large spin-induced quadrupole moments. The spin-induced quadrupole of a body first appears in the phase of a waveform at the early inspiral stage of the binary coalescence, making it a relatively clean probe of the internal structure of the body. However, for objects with large quadrupolar deviations from Kerr, searches using binary black hole (BBH) models would be ineffective. In order to perform a computationally-feasible search, we present two dimensionally-reduced models which are derived from the original six-dimensional post-Newtonian waveform for such systems. Our dimensional reduction method is guided by power counting in the post-Newtonian expansion, suitable reparameterizations of the source physics, and truncating terms in the phase that are small in most physically well-motivated regions of parameter space. In addition, we note that large quadrupolar deviations cause the frequency at which a binary system reaches its minimum binding energy to be reduced substantially. This minimum signals the end of the inspiral regime and provides a natural cutoff for the PN waveform. We provide accurate analytic estimates for these frequency cutoffs. Finally, we perform injection studies to test the effectualness of the dimensionally reduced waveforms. We find that over $80\%$ of the injections have an effectualness of $\varepsilon > 0.999$, significantly higher than is typically required for standard BBH banks, for systems with component spins of $|χ_i| \lesssim 0.6$ and dimensionless quadrupole of $κ_i \lesssim 10^3$. Importantly, these waveforms represent an essential first step towards enabling an effective search for astrophysical objects with large quadrupoles.

gr-qc↗