A Coincidence Null Test for Poisson-Distributed Events

Understand

When transient events are observed with multiple sensors, it is often necessary to establish the significance of coincident events.

• We derive a universal null test for an arbitrary number of sensors motivated by the archetypal detection problem for independent Poisson-distributed events in gravitational-wave detectors such as LIGO and Virgo.
• In these detectors, transient events may be witnessed by myriad channels that record interferometric signals and the surrounding physical environment.
• We apply our null test to a broad set of simulated gravitational-wave events as well as to a real gravitational-wave detection to determine which auxiliary channels do and do not witness real gravitational waves, and therefore which are safe to use when constructing vetoes.