A power filter for the detection of burst events based on time–frequency spectrum estimation

We propose as a statistic for the detection of bursts in a gravitational wave interferometer the 'energy' of the events estimated with a time-dependent calculation of the spectrum. This statistic has an asymptotic Gaussian distribution with known statistical moments, which makes it possible to perform a uniformly most powerful test (McDonough R N and Whalen A D 1995 Detection of Signals in Noise (New York: Academic)) on the energy mean. We estimate the receiver operating characteristic (ROC, from the same book) of this statistic for different levels of the signal-to-noise ratio in the specific case of a simulated noise having the spectral density expected for Virgo, using test signals taken from a library of possible waveforms emitted during the collapse of the core of type II supernovae.