Gravitational Wave Burst Search

We will prepare for, carry out, and report on a search for burst-like events of gravitational wave origin in data to be collected in an Engineering Run that will have coincident data from operating interferometers at both Hanford and Livingston (hereinafter referred to as the Science Analysis Challenge or SAC). By “burst-like events” (hereinafter “bursts”) we refer in the most general sense to transients, of gravitational wave origin, in the output of the interferometers. To limit the search to a practicable scope, we will identify bursts through the use of filters designed to span a rather general class of transients in the output (such as might be expected of impulsive events, like black hole ringdown or supernovae), rather than a set designed to match detailed models of gravitational waveforms. Thus, we describe our method as a search for “unmodeled” sources, rather than one based on, e.g., matched templates or other specialized methods. Two lines of analysis are proposed. The first is driven by observations at the LIGO detectors. The second is driven by other, non-gravitational wave observations: e.g., triggers coming from SNEWS or operating γ-ray burst detectors. This activity is simultaneously a “proof of principle” demonstration of a search for unmodeled bursts, a prototype development of one set of techniques for identifying and characterizing generic candidate gravitational wave bursts, a LAL and LSC software development effort and system test, and a data processing/interpretation activity. The over-arching goal of this activity, which will resolve all conflicts between these activities, is the analysis of detector data using the tools and techniques that will be used to analyze science run data.