Search for gravitational waves from galactic and extra-galactic binary neutron stars

Abstract

We use 373 hours ( 15 days) of data from the second science run of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors to search for signals from binary neutron star coalescences within a maximum distance of about 1.5 Mpc, a volume of space which includes the Andromeda Galaxy and other galaxies of the Local Group of galaxies. This analysis requires a signal to be found in data from detectors at the two LIGO sites, according to a set of coincidence criteria. The background (accidental coincidence rate) is determined from the data and is used to judge the significance of event candidates. No inspiral gravitational-wave events were identified in our search. Using a population model which includes the Local Group, we establish an upper limit of less than 47 inspiral events per year per Milky Way equivalent B. ABBOTT et al. PHYSICAL REVIEW D 72, 082001 (2005) 082001-2 galaxy with 90% confidence for nonspinning binary neutron star systems with component masses between 1 and 3M .

Status of NINJA: the Numerical INJection Analysis project

“…The standard template for the LSC-Virgo search [5][6][7][8]10] is based on the non-spinning post-Newtonian inspiral waveforms, calculated directly in the Fourier domain through the stationary phase approximation [85,91]. These waveforms, referred to as SPA or TaylorF2, are parameterized by the binary's component masses m 1 and m 2 [92][93][94], or equivalently by total mass M = m 1 + m 2 and symmetric mass ratio η = m 1 m 2 /M 2 .…”

FINDCHIRP: An algorithm for detection of gravitational waves from inspiraling compact binaries

“…The FINDCHIRP algorithm is the implementation of matched filtering used by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and Virgo's offline searches for gravitational waves from low-mass (2M < M ¼ m 1 þ m 2 < 35M ), high-mass (25M < M < 100M ), and primordial black hole (0:2M < M < 2M ) coalescing compact binaries [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. FINDCHIRP has also been used to search for supermassive black holes in data from the LISA Mock Data Challenge [26][27][28] and for comparisons with numerical relativity waveforms for both high-mass and low-mass binaries [29].…”

Parameter estimation of compact binaries using the inspiral and ringdown waveforms

“…This is an important problem because many efforts are now underway to detect both the inspiral and the ringdown signals using matched filtering techniques in real data [27][28][29][30][31]. In a recent paper [32], parameter estimation of inspiralling compact binaries has been revised using up to the 3.5 restricted post-Newtonian approximation, extending previous analysis [33,34], but ignoring the other stages.…”