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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc, Astrophysics, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, astro-ph.IM
Abstract:
Coalescing compact binary systems consisting of neutron stars and/or black
holes should be detectable with upcoming advanced gravitational-wave detectors
such as LIGO, Virgo, GEO and {KAGRA}. Gravitational-wave experiments to date
have been riddled with non-Gaussian, non-stationary noise that makes it
challenging to ascertain the significance of an event. A popular method to
estimate significance is to time shift the events collected between detectors
in order to establish a false coincidence rate. Here we propose a method for
estimating the false alarm probability of events using variables commonly
available to search candidates that does not rely on explicitly time shifting
the events while still capturing the non-Gaussianity of the data. We present a
method for establishing a statistical detection of events in the case where
several silver-plated (3--5$\sigma$) events exist but not necessarily any
gold-plated ($>5\sigma$) events. We use LIGO data and a simulated, realistic,
blind signal population to test our method.
