Prospects for Observing and Localizing Gravitational-Wave Transients with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo

Document #:

LIGO-P1200087-v32

Document type:

P - Publications

Abstract:

We present a possible observing scenario for the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors over the next decade, with the intention of providing information to the astronomy community to facilitate planning for multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. We determine the expected sensitivity of the network to transient gravitational-wave signals, and study the capability of the network to determine the sky location of the source. We report our findings for gravitational-wave transients, with particular focus on gravitational-wave signals from the inspiral of binary neutron-star (BNS) systems, which are considered likely to be the most common for detection and the most promising for multi-messenger astronomy. The ability to localize the source of the detected signals depends on the geographical distribution of the detectors and their relative sensitivity, and 90% credible regions can be as large as thousands of square degrees when only two sensitive detectors are operational. Determining the sky position of a significant fraction of detected signals to areas of 5 deg^2 to 20 deg^2 will require at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of ∼ 2 of each other and with a broad frequency bandwidth. Should one of the LIGO detectors be relocated to India as expected, a significant fraction of gravitational-wave signals will be localized to a few square degrees by gravitational-wave observations alone.

Files in Document:

• Manuscript (gw_commission_observe_update.pdf, file is not accessible)

Other Files:

• Input files (obsScenario.tar.gz, file is not accessible)

Topics:

• Commissioning
• Compact Binaries
• Astrophysics / Multi-messenger
• GW Bursts

Author Groups:

• LVC

Keywords:

observing-scenario

Notes and Changes:

Published in Living Reviews in Relativity

Publication Information:

http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2016-1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/lrr-2016-1
http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0670