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

Document #:

LIGO-P1200087-v57

Document type:

P - Publications

Abstract:

We present possible observing scenarios for the Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA 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 estimate the 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 systems, which are the most promising targets for multi-messenger astronomy. The ability to localize the sources 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 5–20 square degrees requires at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of ~2 of each other and with a broad frequency bandwidth. When all detectors, including KAGRA and the third LIGO detector in India, reach design sensitivity, a significant fraction of gravitational-wave signals will be localized to a few square degrees by gravitational-wave observations alone.

Files in Document:

• Observing Scenarios Document (ObservingScenarios.pdf, file is not accessible)

Topics:

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

Author Groups:

• LVK

Keywords:

observing-scenario

Notes and Changes:

Updated with the LVC and KAGRA author lists. Also the numbers in Table 5 for the 90% comoving volume have changed significantly due to a problem found in the simulation (failure to do cosmological correction).
Other minor changes (PNG format files to PDF for example).

This new version will be uploaded to arXiv and (hopefully), submitted to LRR. Absent any problems being found.