Targeted search for the kinematic dipole of the gravitational-wave background

Adrian Ka Wai Chung; Alexander C. Jenkins; Joseph D. Romano; Mairi Sakellariadou

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.106.082005

Targeted search for the kinematic dipole of the gravitational-wave background

Adrian Ka Wai Chung, Alexander C. Jenkins, Joseph D. Romano, Mairi Sakellariadou

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

There is growing interest in using current and future gravitational-wave interferometers to search for anisotropies in the gravitational-wave background. One guaranteed anisotropic signal is the kinematic dipole induced by our peculiar motion with respect to the cosmic rest frame, as measured in other full-sky observables such as the cosmic microwave background. Our prior knowledge of the amplitude and direction of this dipole is not explicitly accounted for in existing searches by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA but could provide crucial information to help disentangle the sources which contribute to the gravitational-wave background. Here, we develop a targeted search pipeline which uses this prior knowledge to enable unbiased and minimum-variance inference of the dipole magnitude. Our search generalizes existing methods to allow for a time-dependent signal model, which captures the annual modulation of the dipole due to the Earth's orbit. We validate our pipeline on mock data, demonstrating that neglecting this time dependence can bias the inferred dipole by as much as O(10%). We then run our analysis on the full LIGO/Virgo O1+O2+O3 dataset, obtaining upper limits on the dipole amplitude that are consistent with existing anisotropic search results.

Original language	English
Article number	082005
Journal	Physical Review D
Volume	106
Issue number	8
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.106.082005
Publication status	Published - 15 Oct 2022

Access to Document

10.1103/PhysRevD.106.082005

Cite this

@article{19c548882eac4f8083016df47e76b814,

title = "Targeted search for the kinematic dipole of the gravitational-wave background",

abstract = "There is growing interest in using current and future gravitational-wave interferometers to search for anisotropies in the gravitational-wave background. One guaranteed anisotropic signal is the kinematic dipole induced by our peculiar motion with respect to the cosmic rest frame, as measured in other full-sky observables such as the cosmic microwave background. Our prior knowledge of the amplitude and direction of this dipole is not explicitly accounted for in existing searches by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA but could provide crucial information to help disentangle the sources which contribute to the gravitational-wave background. Here, we develop a targeted search pipeline which uses this prior knowledge to enable unbiased and minimum-variance inference of the dipole magnitude. Our search generalizes existing methods to allow for a time-dependent signal model, which captures the annual modulation of the dipole due to the Earth's orbit. We validate our pipeline on mock data, demonstrating that neglecting this time dependence can bias the inferred dipole by as much as O(10%). We then run our analysis on the full LIGO/Virgo O1+O2+O3 dataset, obtaining upper limits on the dipole amplitude that are consistent with existing anisotropic search results.",

author = "Chung, {Adrian Ka Wai} and Jenkins, {Alexander C.} and Romano, {Joseph D.} and Mairi Sakellariadou",

note = "Funding Information: A. K.-W. C. thanks Andrew Matas, Erik Floden, and Patrick Meyers for help in analyzing mock and actual data of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors and Stuart Anderson for coordinating the file I/O on the CIT clusters. The authors acknowledge use of data, software, and web tools from the GW Open Science Center ( https://www.gw-openscience.org ), a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and the Virgo Collaboration. The authors are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Laboratory and supported by National Science Foundation Grants No. PHY-0757058 and No. PHY-0823459. Funding Information: A. K.-W. C. is supported by the Hong Kong Scholarship for Excellence Scheme (HKSES). J. D. R. is supported in part by start-up funds provided by Texas Tech University and National Science Foundation Grant No. PHY-2207270. M. S. is supported in part by the Science and Technology Facility Council (STFC), United Kingdom, under the research Grant No. ST/P000258/1. This work was partly enabled by the UCL Cosmoparticle Initiative. Funding Information: This paper has a LIGO document number LIGO-P2200215 and a KCL document number KCL-PH-TH/2022-38. This material is based upon work supported by NSF{\textquoteright}s LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation. This paper has an Einstein Telescope number ET-0169A-22. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 American Physical Society.",

year = "2022",

month = oct,

day = "15",

doi = "10.1103/PhysRevD.106.082005",

language = "English",

volume = "106",

journal = "Physical Review D",

issn = "2470-0010",

publisher = "American Physical Society (APS)",

number = "8",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Targeted search for the kinematic dipole of the gravitational-wave background

AU - Chung, Adrian Ka Wai

AU - Jenkins, Alexander C.

AU - Romano, Joseph D.

AU - Sakellariadou, Mairi

N1 - Funding Information: A. K.-W. C. thanks Andrew Matas, Erik Floden, and Patrick Meyers for help in analyzing mock and actual data of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors and Stuart Anderson for coordinating the file I/O on the CIT clusters. The authors acknowledge use of data, software, and web tools from the GW Open Science Center ( https://www.gw-openscience.org ), a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and the Virgo Collaboration. The authors are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Laboratory and supported by National Science Foundation Grants No. PHY-0757058 and No. PHY-0823459. Funding Information: A. K.-W. C. is supported by the Hong Kong Scholarship for Excellence Scheme (HKSES). J. D. R. is supported in part by start-up funds provided by Texas Tech University and National Science Foundation Grant No. PHY-2207270. M. S. is supported in part by the Science and Technology Facility Council (STFC), United Kingdom, under the research Grant No. ST/P000258/1. This work was partly enabled by the UCL Cosmoparticle Initiative. Funding Information: This paper has a LIGO document number LIGO-P2200215 and a KCL document number KCL-PH-TH/2022-38. This material is based upon work supported by NSF’s LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation. This paper has an Einstein Telescope number ET-0169A-22. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 American Physical Society.

PY - 2022/10/15

Y1 - 2022/10/15

N2 - There is growing interest in using current and future gravitational-wave interferometers to search for anisotropies in the gravitational-wave background. One guaranteed anisotropic signal is the kinematic dipole induced by our peculiar motion with respect to the cosmic rest frame, as measured in other full-sky observables such as the cosmic microwave background. Our prior knowledge of the amplitude and direction of this dipole is not explicitly accounted for in existing searches by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA but could provide crucial information to help disentangle the sources which contribute to the gravitational-wave background. Here, we develop a targeted search pipeline which uses this prior knowledge to enable unbiased and minimum-variance inference of the dipole magnitude. Our search generalizes existing methods to allow for a time-dependent signal model, which captures the annual modulation of the dipole due to the Earth's orbit. We validate our pipeline on mock data, demonstrating that neglecting this time dependence can bias the inferred dipole by as much as O(10%). We then run our analysis on the full LIGO/Virgo O1+O2+O3 dataset, obtaining upper limits on the dipole amplitude that are consistent with existing anisotropic search results.

AB - There is growing interest in using current and future gravitational-wave interferometers to search for anisotropies in the gravitational-wave background. One guaranteed anisotropic signal is the kinematic dipole induced by our peculiar motion with respect to the cosmic rest frame, as measured in other full-sky observables such as the cosmic microwave background. Our prior knowledge of the amplitude and direction of this dipole is not explicitly accounted for in existing searches by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA but could provide crucial information to help disentangle the sources which contribute to the gravitational-wave background. Here, we develop a targeted search pipeline which uses this prior knowledge to enable unbiased and minimum-variance inference of the dipole magnitude. Our search generalizes existing methods to allow for a time-dependent signal model, which captures the annual modulation of the dipole due to the Earth's orbit. We validate our pipeline on mock data, demonstrating that neglecting this time dependence can bias the inferred dipole by as much as O(10%). We then run our analysis on the full LIGO/Virgo O1+O2+O3 dataset, obtaining upper limits on the dipole amplitude that are consistent with existing anisotropic search results.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85141535708&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.082005

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.082005

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85141535708

SN - 2470-0010

VL - 106

JO - Physical Review D

JF - Physical Review D

IS - 8

M1 - 082005

ER -

Targeted search for the kinematic dipole of the gravitational-wave background

Abstract

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this