Abstract. Tracksearch is an algorithm to detect unmodelled gravitational wave signals in interferometric data which was first proposed almost ten years ago by Anderson and Balasubramanian. It is one of the only methods proposed which is well suited to look for unmodelled gravitational wave signals which have hundreds of cycles or more. This paper continues the work they began. In particular, we introduce a new trigger statistic for tracksearch, the integrated power, and compare it to the track length statistic used by Anderson and Balasubramanian. Our initial findings suggest that the integrated power will perform equivalently to or better than track length in almost every case. Furthermore, the integrated power statistic appears to be far less sensitive to suboptimal parameter choices, indicating that it may be more suitable for use on real gravitational wave data.

PACS numbers: 04.80.Nn, 07.05.Kf, 07.05.Pj

Print publication: Issue 18 (21 September 2005)
Received 31 March 2005, in final form 23 June 2005
Published 6 September 2005