Characterizing the gravitational wave signature from cosmic string cusps

Journal Article · Sun Feb 15 04:00:00 EST 2009 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.79.043014· OSTI ID:21259980

Key, Joey Shapiro; Cornish, Neil J ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana 59717 (United States)

Cosmic strings are predicted to form kinks that travel along the string, and cusps, where a small region of the string moves at close to the speed of light. These disturbances are radiated away as highly beamed gravitational waves that produce a burst like pulse as the cone of emission sweeps past an observer. Gravitational wave detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) will be capable of detecting these bursts for a wide class of string models. Such a detection would illuminate the fields of string theory, cosmology, and relativity. Here, we develop template based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques that can efficiently detect and characterize the signals from cosmic string cusps. We estimate how well the signal parameters can be recovered by the advanced LIGO-Virgo network and the LISA detector using a combination of MCMC and Fisher matrix techniques. We also consider joint detections by the ground- and space-based instruments. We show that a parallel tempered MCMC approach can detect and characterize the signals from cosmic string cusps, and we demonstrate the utility of this approach on simulated data from the third round of mock LISA data challenges.

• OSTI ID: 21259980
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 79; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

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COSMOLOGY
CUSPED GEOMETRIES
DISTURBANCES
EMISSION
GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTORS
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
INTERFEROMETERS
LASER RADIATION
MARKOV PROCESS
MONTE CARLO METHOD
PULSES
SIMULATION
SPACE
VELOCITY