Efficient all-sky search of continuous gravitational waves by locally optimum detection

Abstract Given the mathematical model of continuous gravitational waves from astrophysical sources, this paper deals with the detection of such almost periodic signals, buried in additive Gaussian noise. We derive a new detector consisting of a properly weighted sum of the received signal spectral components. Through the study of a properly defined loss function, we show that the receiver is suitable for all-sky search (signal direction of arrival unknown) with a moderate computational demand. The performances of the detector are analytically derived. The exhibited capability of performing the all-sky search trades off favorably for a slight performance degradation with respect to the optimum non-coherent detector.