wavegraph

Einstein's Theory of General Relativity predicts the existence of gravitational waves (GW). A worldwide network of next generation laser interferometers aims at making the first direct detection of GWs from astrophysical sources such as coalescing binaries of neutron-stars and/or black-holes. It will start taking science data by the end of this year (2015). The first discovery of GWs is expected within the decade; this will open an entirely new view of the universe. GW data analysis has reached maturity. Important milestones have been reached during the last science runs. However, a number of important and challenging issues remain open. GW transient detection (our focus here) is very much constrained by important computational requirements. This proposal has the overall objective of improving the analysis of second-generation data and ensure its readiness for the upcoming first GW detection. Coalescing binaries of neutron stars and/or black holes (in short, CBCs, for compact binary coalescences) are considered one of the most promising sources of GWs. The last minutes before the binary merges coincide with the emission of an intense burst of GWs. An accurate modeling of the dynamics of the binary shows that the GW waveform is a quasi-periodic signal with a frequency increasing according to a power law with time, i.e. a chirp. When dealing with multiple detectors, the most sensitive searches analyze the data streams coherently, using sensor array techniques analog to the beam-forming methods used in radio astronomy, for instance. For CBC signals, coherent matched filtering searches are known to be the most sensitive. However, this type of analysis is very computationally demanding and unfeasible in practice. We propose to address this issue with a new search method for such signals based on wavelet graphs. This proposal builds an interdisciplinary team that gathers together mathematicians/statisticians and physicists/data analysis experts that will collaborate to resolve intimately coupled methodological and implementation issues, and to deliver a functional data analysis pipeline ready for production, that will be applied to the scientific data gathered by the gravitational wave interferometers of the latest generation.