Detection of gravitational wave bursts by interferometric detectors

We study some filters for the detection of burstlike signals in the data of interferometric gravitational wave detectors. We present first two general (nonlinear) filters with no a priori assumption on the waveforms to detect. A third filter, a peak correlator, is also introduced and permits us to estimate the gain, when some prior information is known about the waveforms. We use the catalog of supernova gravitational wave signals built by Zwerger and Muller in order to have a benchmark of the performance of each filter and to compare to the performance of the optimal filter. The three filters could be a part of an on-line triggering in interferometric gravitational wave detectors, specialized in the selection of burst events. [S0556-2821(99)01706-3].