A power filter for the detection of burst sources of gravitational radiation in interferometric detectors

We present a filter for detecting gravitational wave signals from burst sou rces. This filter requires only minimal advance knowledge of the expected s ignal: i.e. the signal's frequency band and time duration. It consists of a threshold on the total power in the data stream in the specified signal ba nd during the specified time. This filter is optimal (in the Neyman-Pearson sense) for signal searches where only this minimal information is availabl e.