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Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

arxiv.org/abs/2609.11401

quality89

Updated 3 h ago · first seen 11 Sept 2026

paper_01M294FQYFK6MF40DF058XAJ8N

Published
11 Sept 2026
T1 · 3 h ago
arXiv
2609.11401
T1 · 3 h ago
Category
gr-qc
T1 · 3 h ago

Abstract

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

Authors 3

Ann-Kristin Malz, Gregory Ashton, Nicolo Colombo

Specification

Official page

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh

Arxiv announce type
cross

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh

arXiv id
2609.11401

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh

Categories
gr-qc, cs.LG, stat.ML

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh

PDF

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh

Primary category
gr-qc

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh

Published
11 Sept 2026

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh

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Provenance

Attributed facts

9

Source tiers

T19

Freshest observation

3 h ago

Conflicts

None