Rapid Identification of Strongly Lensed Gravitational-Wave Events with Machine Learning

A small fraction of the gravitational-wave (GW) signals that will be detected by second and third generation detectors are expected to be strongly lensed by galaxies and clusters, producing multiple observable copies. While optimal Bayesian model selection methods are developed to identify lensed si...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2021-06
Main Authors: Goyal, Srashti, Harikrishnan, D, Kapadia, Shasvath J, Parameswaran Ajith
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bayesian analysis
Detectors
Galactic clusters
Galaxies
Gravitational waves
Machine learning
Random noise
Signal processing
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:A small fraction of the gravitational-wave (GW) signals that will be detected by second and third generation detectors are expected to be strongly lensed by galaxies and clusters, producing multiple observable copies. While optimal Bayesian model selection methods are developed to identify lensed signals, processing tens of thousands (billions) of possible pairs of events detected with second (third) generation detectors is both computationally intensive and time consuming. To mitigate this problem, we propose to use machine learning to rapidly rule out a vast majority of candidate lensed pairs. As a proof of principle, we simulate non-spinning binary black hole events added to Gaussian noise, and train the machine on their time-frequency maps (Q-transforms) and localisation skymaps (using Bayestar), both of which can be generated in seconds. We show that the trained machine is able to accurately identify lensed pairs with efficiencies comparable to existing Bayesian methods.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2106.12466