Detection of periodic gravitational wave sources by Hough transform in the frequency and spin down plane

Understand

In the hierarchical search for periodic sources of gravitational waves, the candidate selection, in the incoherent step, can be performed with Hough transform procedures.

• In this paper we analyze the problem of sensitivity loss due to discretization of the parameters space vs computing cost, comparing the properties of the sky Hough procedure with those of a new frequency Hough, which is based on a transformation from the time - observed frequency plane to the source frequency - spin down plane.
• Results on simulated peak maps suggest various advantages in favor of the use of the frequency Hough.
• The ones which show up to really make the difference are 1) the possibility to enhance the frequency resolution without relevantly affecting the computing cost.