Glossary

A glossary of common terms and abbreviations used in gravitational wave data analysis. Also check out the one from the emfollow documentation from the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra collaboration.

BBH

Binary Black Hole: the coalescence of two black holes.

BNS

Binary Neutron Star: the coalescence of two neutron stars.

CBC

Compact Binary Coalescence: the coalescence of two compact objects, such as black holes or neutron stars.

SNR

Signal-to-Noise Ratio: a simple way to quantify the significance of a signal; for a real signal, in terms of the Wiener product it will look like \(\text{SNR} = \sqrt{(h | d)}\) where \(d\) are the measured data while \(h\) is the signal template. The “optimal SNR” we use to approximate the real one (since we do not know the noise realization \(n\) in \(d = h + n\)) is \(\text{SNR}_{\text{opt}} = \sqrt{(h | h)}\).