Generating Event Triggers Based on Hilbert-Huang Transform and Its Application to Gravitational-Wave Data

Abstract

We present a new event trigger generator based on the Hilbert-Huang transform, named EtaGen ($\eta$Gen). It decomposes a time-series data into several adaptive modes without imposing a priori bases on the data. The adaptive modes are used to find transients (excesses) in the background noises. A clustering algorithm is used to gather excesses corresponding to a single event and to reconstruct its waveform. The performance of EtaGen is evaluated by how many injections in the LIGO simulated data are found. EtaGen is viable as an event trigger generator when compared directly with the performance of Omicron, which is currently the best event trigger generator used in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration.