Michele's wiki/blog

Authors: Louis J. Rubbo

Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006

Abstract: A typical approach to developing an analysis algorithm for analyzing gravitational wave data is to assume a particular waveform and use its characteristics to formulate a detection criteria. Once a detection has been made, the algorithm uses those same characteristics to tease out parameter estimates from a given data set. While an obvious starting point, such an approach is initiated by assuming a single, correct model for the waveform regardless of the signal strength, observation length, noise, etc. This paper introduces the method of Bayesian model selection as a way to select the most plausible waveform model from a set of models given the data and prior information. The discussion is done in the scientific context for the proposed Laser Interferometer Space Antenna.

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