A robust machine learning algorithm to search for continuous gravitational waves

Understand

Many continuous gravitational wave searches are affected by instrumental spectral lines that could be confused with a continuous astrophysical signal.

• Several techniques have been developed to limit the effect of these lines by penalising signals that appear in only a single detector.
• We have developed a general method, using a convolutional neural network, to reduce the impact of instrumental artefacts on searches that use the SOAP algorithm.
• The method can identify features in corresponding frequency bands of each detector and classify these bands as containing a signal, an instrumental line, or noise.