Low-Latency Detection of Gravitational Waves

Abstract

Recent advances in ground‐based interferometric gravitational wave detectors have produced a high level of confidence in detection of transient gravitational wave signals generated by coalescing neutron star or black hole binaries. The combination of gravitational wave data and associated electromagnetic radiation observed by telescopes will allow precision testing of general relativity, including measurement of the speed of gravitational waves. We present a new method of detection based on Infinite Impulse response (IIR) filtering with the goal of computing signal to noise ratios in near real time (low‐latency). We then apply a set of IIR filters to the incoming detector data and coherent sum the outputs to produce near optimal signal to noise ratio. Our results show a computation time speed‐up of >50 times compared with standard time‐domain matched filter methods.

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