Cross-correlation analysis of data from a network of gravitational-wave detectors.*

Model-independent detection of a transient gravitational wave (GW) signal requires time-frequency (TF) data analysis from multiple GW detectors. Usually, the signal is identified with the excess-power statistic extracting the TF data amplitudes above the fluctuations of the detector noise. Such a detection approach is affected by the temporal 

and spectral leakage in the time-frequency distribution limiting the detection of the time-varying signal power. Also, the excess-power statistic is not suitable for identifying signals with amplitudes well inside the detector noise distribution. To circumvent these limitations, this talk introduces a novel TF transform used to obtain the leakage-free TF distribution, and the cross-power statistic exploiting the cross-correlation between the GW detectors, which is used for signal detection.