Broad searches for continuous gravitational wave signals rely on hierarchies of follow-up stages for candidates above a given significance threshold. An important step to simplify these follow-ups and reduce the computational cost is to bundle together in a single follow-up nearby candidates. This step is called clustering and we investigate carrying it out with a deep learning network. In our first paper [B. Beheshtipour and M. A. Papa, Phys. Rev. D 101, 064009 (2020)], we implemented a deep learning clustering network capable of correctly identifying clusters due to large signals. In this paper, a network is implemented that can detect clusters due to much fainter signals. These two networks are complementary and we show that a cascade of the two networks achieves an excellent detection efficiency across a wide range of signal strengths, with a false alarm rate comparable/lower than that of methods currently in use.

• Received 9 December 2020
• Accepted 22 February 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.103.064027