arXiv subjects

V. Necula

Publications and source records attributed to V. Necula.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2020

Coherent WaveBurst, a pipeline for unmodeled gravitational-wave data analysis

coherent WaveBurst (cWB) is a highly configurable pipeline designed to detect a broad range of gravitational-wave (GW) transients in the data of the worldwide network of GW detectors. The algorithmic core of cWB is a time-frequency analysis with the Wilson-Daubechies-Meyer wavelets aimed at the identification of GW events without prior knowledge of the signal waveform. cWB has been in active development since 2003 and it has been used to analyze all scientific data collected by the LIGO-Virgo detectors ever since. On September 14, 2015, the cWB low-latency search detected the first gravitational-wave event, GW150914, a merger of two black holes. In 2019, a public open-source version of cWB has been released with GPLv3 license.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2017

Enhancing the significance of gravitational wave bursts through signal classification

The quest to observe gravitational waves challenges our ability to discriminate signals from detector noise. This issue is especially relevant for transient gravitational waves searches with a robust eyes wide open approach, the so called all- sky burst searches. Here we show how signal classification methods inspired by broad astrophysical characteristics can be implemented in all-sky burst searches preserving their generality. In our case study, we apply a multivariate analyses based on artificial neural networks to classify waves emitted in compact binary coalescences. We enhance by orders of magnitude the significance of signals belonging to this broad astrophysical class against the noise background. Alternatively, at a given level of mis-classification of noise events, we can detect about 1/4 more of the total signal population. We also show that a more general strategy of signal classification can actually be performed, by testing the ability of artificial neural networks in discriminating different signal classes. The possible impact on future observations by the LIGO-Virgo network of detectors is discussed by analysing recoloured noise from previous LIGO-Virgo data with coherent WaveBurst, one of the flagship pipelines dedicated to all-sky searches for transient gravitational waves.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2014

Prospects for intermediate mass black hole binary searches with advanced gravitational-wave detectors

We estimated the sensitivity of the upcoming advanced, ground-based gravitational-wave observatories (the upgraded LIGO and Virgo and the KAGRA interferometers) to coalescing intermediate mass black hole binaries (IMBHB). We added waveforms modeling the gravitational radiation emitted by IMBHBs to detectors' simulated data and searched for the injected signals with the coherent WaveBurst algorithm. The tested binary's parameter space covers non-spinning IMBHBs with source-frame total masses between 50 and 1050 $\text{M}_{\odot}$ and mass ratios between $1/6$ and 1$\,$. We found that advanced detectors could be sensitive to these systems up to a range of a few Gpc. A theoretical model was adopted to estimate the expected observation rates, yielding up to a few tens of events per year. Thus, our results indicate that advanced detectors will have a reasonable chance to collect the first direct evidence for intermediate mass black holes and open a new, intriguing channel for probing the Universe over cosmological scales.

gr-qc↗