As f over dot(f)-frequency dynamics algorithm for gravitational waves - art. no. 041502

Coalescence of low mass compact binaries of neutron stars and black holes a re primary burst sources for LIGO and VIRGO. Of importance in the early sta ges of observations will be the classification of candidate detections by s ource type. The diversity in source parameters and serendipity in any new w indow of observations suggest to consider model-independent detection algor ithms. Here a frequency dynamics algorithm is described which extracts a tr ajectory in the (f)over dot(f) plane from the noisy signal. The algorithm i s studied in simulated binary coalescence. Robust results are obtained with experimental noise data. Experiments show the method to be superior to mat ched filtering in the presence of model imperfections.