Time-frequency detection algorithm for gravitational wave bursts

An efficient algorithm is presented for the identification of short bursts of gravitational radiation in the data from broadband interferometric detectors. The algorithm consists of three steps: pixels of the time-frequency representation of the data that have power above a fixed threshold are first identified, clusters of such pixels that conform to a set of rules on their size and their proximity to other clusters are formed, and a final threshold is applied on the power integrated over all pixels in such clusters. Formal arguments are given to support the conjecture that this algorithm is very efficient for a wide class of signals. A precise model for the false alarm rate of this algorithm is presented, and it is shown using a number of representative numerical simulations to be accurate at the 1% level for most values of the parameters, with maximal error around 10%.