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Free keywords:
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc, Astrophysics, High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, astro-ph.HE
Abstract:
Gravitational wave searches to date have largely focused on non-precessing
systems. Including precession effects greatly increases the number of templates
to be searched over. This leads to a corresponding increase in the
computational cost and can increase the false alarm rate of a realistic search.
On the other hand, there might be astrophysical systems that are entirely
missed by non-precessing searches. In this paper we consider the problem of
constructing a template bank using stochastic methods for neutron star - black
hole binaries allowing for generic precession, but with the restriction that
the total angular momentum of the binary is pointing towards the detector. We
quantify the number of templates required for the search, and we explicitly
construct the template bank. We show that despite the large number of
templates, stochastic methods can be adapted to solve the problem. We quantify
the parameter space region over which the non-precessing search might miss
signals.
