scholarly journals Optimizing multitelescope observations of gravitational-wave counterparts

2019 ◽  
Vol 489 (4) ◽  
pp. 5775-5783 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W Coughlin ◽  
Sarah Antier ◽  
David Corre ◽  
Khalid Alqassimi ◽  
Shreya Anand ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The ever-increasing sensitivity of the network of gravitational-wave detectors has resulted in the accelerated rate of detections from compact binary coalescence systems in the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. Not only has the event rate increased, but also the distances to which phenomena can be detected, leading to a rise in the required sky volume coverage to search for counterparts. Additionally, the improvement of the detectors has resulted in the discovery of more compact binary mergers involving neutron stars, revitalizing dedicated follow-up campaigns. While significant effort has been made by the community to optimize single telescope observations, using both synoptic and galaxy-targeting methods, less effort has been paid to coordinated observations in a network. This is becoming crucial, as the advent of gravitational-wave astronomy has garnered interest around the globe, resulting in abundant networks of telescopes available to search for counterparts. In this paper, we extend some of the techniques developed for single telescopes to a telescope network. We describe simple modifications to these algorithms and demonstrate them on existing network examples. These algorithms are implemented in the open-source software gwemopt, used by some follow-up teams, for ease of use by the broader community.

2021 ◽  
Vol 923 (2) ◽  
pp. 254
Author(s):  
Tito Dal Canton ◽  
Alexander H. Nitz ◽  
Bhooshan Gadre ◽  
Gareth S. Cabourn Davies ◽  
Verónica Villa-Ortega ◽  
...  

Abstract The third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo took place between 2019 April and 2020 March and resulted in dozens of gravitational-wave candidates, many of which are now published as confident detections. A crucial requirement of the third observing run was the rapid identification and public reporting of compact binary mergers, which enabled massive follow-up observation campaigns with electromagnetic and neutrino observatories. PyCBC Live is a low-latency search for compact binary mergers based on frequency-domain matched filtering, which was used during the second and third observing runs, together with other low-latency analyses, to generate these rapid alerts from the data acquired by LIGO and Virgo. This paper describes and evaluates the improvements made to PyCBC Live after the second observing run, which defined its operation and performance during the third observing run.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (S285) ◽  
pp. 191-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Centrella ◽  
Samaya Nissanke ◽  
Roy Williams

AbstractThe gravitational-wave window onto the universe will open in roughly five years, when Advanced LIGO and Virgo achieve the first detections of high-frequency gravitational waves, most likely coming from compact binary mergers. Electromagnetic follow-up of these triggers, using radio, optical, and high energy telescopes, promises exciting opportunities in multi-messenger time-domain astronomy. In the decade, space-based observations of low-frequency gravitational waves from massive black hole mergers, and their electromagnetic counterparts, will open up further vistas for discovery. This two-part workshop featured brief presentations and stimulating discussions on the challenges and opportunities presented by gravitational-wave astronomy. Highlights from the workshop, with the emphasis on strategies for electromagnetic follow-up, are presented in this report.


2021 ◽  
Vol 922 (1) ◽  
pp. 76
Author(s):  
Alexander H. Nitz ◽  
Collin D. Capano ◽  
Sumit Kumar ◽  
Yi-Fan Wang ◽  
Shilpa Kastha ◽  
...  

Abstract We present the third open gravitational-wave catalog (3-OGC) of compact-binary coalescences, based on the analysis of the public LIGO and Virgo data from 2015 through 2019 (O1, O2, O3a). Our updated catalog includes a population of 57 observations, including 4 binary black hole mergers that had not been previously reported. This consists of 55 binary black hole mergers and the 2 binary neutron star mergers, GW170817 and GW190425. We find no additional significant binary neutron star or neutron star–black hole merger events. The most confident new detection is the binary black hole merger GW190925_232845, which was observed by the LIGO–Hanford and Virgo observatories with  astro > 0.99 ; its primary and secondary component masses are 20.2 − 2.5 + 3.9 M ⊙ and 15.6 − 2.6 + 2.1 M ⊙ , respectively. We estimate the parameters of all binary black hole events using an up-to-date waveform model that includes both subdominant harmonics and precession effects. To enable deep follow up as our understanding of the underlying populations evolves, we make available our comprehensive catalog of events, including the subthreshold population of candidates, and the posterior samples of our source parameter estimates.


2020 ◽  
Vol 245 ◽  
pp. 07050
Author(s):  
Stefano Bagnasco

Advanced Virgo is an interferometer for the detection of gravitational waves at the European Gravitational Observatory in Italy. Along with the two Advanced LIGO interferometers in the US, Advanced Virgo is being used to collect data from astrophysical sources such as compact binary coalescences and is currently running the third observational period, collecting gravitational wave event candidates at a rate of more than once per week. Data from the interferometer are processed by running search pipelines for several expected signals, from coalescing compact binaries to continuous waves and burst events. Furthermore, detector characterisation studies are run. Some of the processing needs to be done with low latency, to be able to provide triggers for other observatories and make multi-messenger observations possible. Deep searches are run offline on external computing centres. Thus, data needs also to be reliably and promptly distributed from the EGO site to computer centres in Europe and the US for further analysis and archival storage. Two of the defining characteristics of Virgo computing are the heterogeneity of the activities and the need to interoperate with LIGO. A very wide array of analysis pipelines differing in scientific target, implementation details and running environment assumptions have to be allowed to run ubiquitously and uniformly on dedicated resources and, in perspective, on heterogeneous infrastructures. The current status, possible strategies and outlook of Virgo computing are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 893 (2) ◽  
pp. 100 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Hamburg ◽  
C. Fletcher ◽  
E. Burns ◽  
A. Goldstein ◽  
E. Bissaldi ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun-Wei Yu ◽  
Aming Chen ◽  
Zi-Gao Dai ◽  
Shao-Ze Li ◽  
Liang-Duan Liu ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroki Takeda ◽  
Atsushi Nishizawa ◽  
Koji Nagano ◽  
Yuta Michimura ◽  
Kentaro Komori ◽  
...  

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