False positives for gravitational lensing: the gravitational-wave perspective

Fuente: arXiv
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1. Verfasser: Keitel, David
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Keitel, David
author_facet Keitel, David
contents For the first detection of a novel astrophysical phenomenon, scientific standards are particularly high. Especially in a multi-messenger context, there are also opportunity costs to follow-up observations on any detection claims. So in searching for the still elusive lensed gravitational waves, care needs to be taken in controlling false positives. In particular, many methods for identifying strong lensing rely on some form of parameter similarity or waveform consistency, which under rapidly growing catalog sizes can expose them to false positives from coincident but unlensed events if proper care is not taken. And searches for waveform deformations in all lensing regimes are subject to degeneracies we need to mitigate between lensing, intrinsic parameters, insufficiently modelled effects such as orbital eccentricity, or even deviations from general relativity. Robust lensing studies also require understanding and mitigating glitches and non-stationarities in the detector data. This article reviews sources of possible false positives (and their flip side: false negatives) in gravitational-wave lensing searches and the main approaches the community is pursuing to mitigate them.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_12974
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle False positives for gravitational lensing: the gravitational-wave perspective
Keitel, David
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
For the first detection of a novel astrophysical phenomenon, scientific standards are particularly high. Especially in a multi-messenger context, there are also opportunity costs to follow-up observations on any detection claims. So in searching for the still elusive lensed gravitational waves, care needs to be taken in controlling false positives. In particular, many methods for identifying strong lensing rely on some form of parameter similarity or waveform consistency, which under rapidly growing catalog sizes can expose them to false positives from coincident but unlensed events if proper care is not taken. And searches for waveform deformations in all lensing regimes are subject to degeneracies we need to mitigate between lensing, intrinsic parameters, insufficiently modelled effects such as orbital eccentricity, or even deviations from general relativity. Robust lensing studies also require understanding and mitigating glitches and non-stationarities in the detector data. This article reviews sources of possible false positives (and their flip side: false negatives) in gravitational-wave lensing searches and the main approaches the community is pursuing to mitigate them.
title False positives for gravitational lensing: the gravitational-wave perspective
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12974