Bayesian Follow-Ups of Einstein@Home All-sky Searches for Continuous Gravitational Waves 

Broad all-sky searches for continuous gravitational waves have high computational costs and require hierarchical pipelines that accept high false alarm rates in the early stages, but make more sensitive follow-up searches of the most promising signal candidates computationally feasible. 

The overall sensitivity of such hierarchical searches is determined by the initial search, and by the number of candidates that can be followed-up.

The latest Einstein@Home searches mark the most sensitive broad continuous wave searches in their respective parameter ranges and produce tenths of millions of candidates in their initial search stage. In the follow-up, the high number of candidates and the associated total width of the parameter range, as well as the weak signal amplitudes targeted pose a considerable challenge.

We present the follow-up methods applied in these searches and their results, with particular focus on a hierarchical Bayesian method implementing an adaptive stage-transition scheme and enabling the highly automated follow-up of millions of candidates, and making the challenges posed by the follow-up managable.