Ab uno disce omnes: Single-harmonic search for extreme mass-ratio inspirals

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Speri, Lorenzo, Tenorio, Rodrigo, Chapman-Bird, Christian, Gerosa, Davide
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Speri, Lorenzo
Tenorio, Rodrigo
Chapman-Bird, Christian
Gerosa, Davide
author_facet Speri, Lorenzo
Tenorio, Rodrigo
Chapman-Bird, Christian
Gerosa, Davide
contents Extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) are one of the key sources of gravitational waves for space-based detectors such as LISA. However, their detection remains a major data analysis challenge due to the signals' complexity and length. We present a semi-coherent, time-frequency search strategy for detecting EMRI harmonics without relying on full waveform templates. We perform an injection and search campaign of single mildly-eccentric equatorial EMRIs in stationary Gaussian noise. The detection statistic is constructed solely from the EMRI frequency evolution, which is modeled phenomenologically using a Singular Value Decomposition basis. The pipeline and the detection statistic are implemented in time-frequency, enabling efficient searches over one year of data in approximately one hour on a single GPU. The search pipeline achieves 94% detection probability at $\mathrm{SNR} = 30$ for a false-alarm probability of $10^{-2}$, recovering the frequency evolution of the dominant harmonic to 1% relative error. By mapping the EMRI parameters consistent with the recovered frequency evolution, we show that the semi-coherent detection statistic enables a sub-percent precision estimation of the EMRI intrinsic parameters. These results establish a computationally efficient framework for constructing EMRI proposals for the LISA global fit.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_20891
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Ab uno disce omnes: Single-harmonic search for extreme mass-ratio inspirals
Speri, Lorenzo
Tenorio, Rodrigo
Chapman-Bird, Christian
Gerosa, Davide
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) are one of the key sources of gravitational waves for space-based detectors such as LISA. However, their detection remains a major data analysis challenge due to the signals' complexity and length. We present a semi-coherent, time-frequency search strategy for detecting EMRI harmonics without relying on full waveform templates. We perform an injection and search campaign of single mildly-eccentric equatorial EMRIs in stationary Gaussian noise. The detection statistic is constructed solely from the EMRI frequency evolution, which is modeled phenomenologically using a Singular Value Decomposition basis. The pipeline and the detection statistic are implemented in time-frequency, enabling efficient searches over one year of data in approximately one hour on a single GPU. The search pipeline achieves 94% detection probability at $\mathrm{SNR} = 30$ for a false-alarm probability of $10^{-2}$, recovering the frequency evolution of the dominant harmonic to 1% relative error. By mapping the EMRI parameters consistent with the recovered frequency evolution, we show that the semi-coherent detection statistic enables a sub-percent precision estimation of the EMRI intrinsic parameters. These results establish a computationally efficient framework for constructing EMRI proposals for the LISA global fit.
title Ab uno disce omnes: Single-harmonic search for extreme mass-ratio inspirals
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20891