Heavy-tailed likelihoods for robustness against data outliers: Applications to the analysis of gravitational wave data

Understand

In recent years, the field of Gravitational Wave Astronomy has flourished.

• With the advent of more sophisticated ground-based detectors and space-based observatories, it is anticipated that Gravitational Wave events will be detected at a much higher rate in the near future.
• One of the future data analysis challenges is performing robust statistical inference in the presence of detector noise transients or non-stationarities, as well as in the presence of stochastic Gravitational Wave signals of possible astrophysical and/or cosmological origin.
• The incomplete knowledge of the total noise of the observatory can introduce challenges in parameter estimation of detected sources.