All-sky search for short gravitational-wave bursts in the first Advanced LIGO run

Abstract

6We present the results from an all-sky search for short-duration gravitational waves in the data of the first run of the Advanced LIGO detectors between September 2015 and January 2016. The search algorithms use minimal assumptions on the signal morphology, so they are sensitive to a wide range of sources emitting gravitational waves. The analyses target transient signals with duration ranging from milliseconds to seconds over the frequency band of 32 to 4096 Hz. The first observed gravitational-wave event, GW150914, has been detected with high confidence in this search; the other known gravitational-wave event, GW151226, falls below the search's sensitivity. Besides GW150914, all of the search results are consistent with the expected rate of accidental noise coincidences. Finally, we estimate rate-density limits for a broad range of non-BBH transient gravitational-wave sources as a function of their gravitational radiation emission energy and their characteristic frequency. These rate-density upper-limits are stricter than those previously published by an order-of-magnitude.

Sensitivity of gravitational wave searches to the full signal of intermediate-mass black hole binaries during the first observing run of Advanced LIGO

“…As described there, we apply a constraint in the morphology of the GW signals, in order to favor the reconstruction of chirality-polarized waveforms [40]. Also, modifying the set-up considered in [41], frequencyvarying post-production selection cuts are tweaked to minimize their impact on the sensitivity to IMBHB mergers: low frequencies are likely to be contaminated by several environmental and instrumental artifacts that can mimic waveforms for massive binary mergers. A well known example of these are the so called sine-Gaussian glitches [34].…”

Binary neutron star mergers and third generation detectors: Localization and early warning

“…Many more GW detections can therefore be expected, from several different GW sources in the universe such as compact binary mergers (i.e. BBH, BNS and neutron star black hole (NSBH)), core-collapse supernovae, non-symmetric neutron stars and the stochastic background [15,16].…”

Localization of binary neutron star mergers with second and third generation gravitational-wave detectors

“…This network of advanced gravitational wave detectors is expected to observe many more BBH and BNS mergers, as well as GWs emitted during the merger of neutron star-black hole (NSBH) binaries [9,10]. Additionally, GWs emitted by nonsymmetric neutron stars, core-collapse supernovae, and other astrophysical transient events may be observed [11,12].…”

“…Unlike most EM telescopes, GW detectors are not pointing instruments, and localization is achieved primarily by measuring the differences in arrival times of the signal in different detectors [51]. Consequently, searching the relatively large GW localization regions (Oð100-1000 deg 2 Þ for the first detections [11,52,53]) represents a challenge for even wide field of view UV, optical and infrared telescopes. These telescopes have fields of view on the order of 10 deg 2 or less [54][55][56].…”