LISA stellar-mass black hole searches with semicoherent and particle-swarm methods

Understand

This paper considers the problem of searching for quiet, long-duration and broadband gravitational wave signals, such as stellar-mass binary black hole binaries, in mock LISA data.

• We propose a method that combines a semi-coherent likelihood with the use of a particle swarm optimizer capable of efficiently exploring a large parameter space.
• The semi-coherent analysis is used to widen the peak of the likelihood distribution over parameter space, congealing secondary peaks and thereby assisting in localizing the posterior bulk.
• An iterative strategy is proposed, using particle swarm methods to initially explore a wide, loosely-coherent likelihood and then progressively constraining the signal to smaller regions in parameter space by increasing the level of coherence.