Abstract Details
| Name: Anirban Ain Affiliation: IUCAA Conference ID: ASI2016_495 Title : Fast Mapping of Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background Using Data Folding Authors and Co-Authors : Sanjit Mitra, IUCAA Abstract Type : Poster Abstract Category : General Relativity and Cosmology Abstract : Gravitational Waves (GW) are propagating distortions of spacetime predicted in Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Various types of sources are expected to emit GWs of different frequencies and durations, which may contain important astrophysical information not accessible to traditional electro-magnetic astronomy. A stochastic GW background (SGWB) is one such source created by a large number of unresolved astrophysical sources and phenomena in the early universe like cosmic inflation. Probing an anisotropic SGWB is best achieved by employing the GW radiometer algorithm using ground-based interferometric detectors. It maps the GW sky using cross-correlation of data from pairs of detectors. Exploiting a temporal symmetry in the radiometer algorithm we have developed and implemented a technique to fold cross-spectral data for the whole observation period to only one sidereal day without any loss of precision. Folding thus makes data analysis more than two orders faster, making it possible to perform searches which have been computationally prohibitive. Being only about a gigabyte in size, folded data offers enormous portability and convenience in handling. Folding incorporates most of the details involved in preprocessing, alleviating many dirty steps otherwise involved in the main analysis. In summary, folding has enabled us to perform a full fledged search for an SGWB on a laptop computer! |