302 research outputs found

    The population of merging compact binaries inferred using gravitational waves through GWTC-3

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    We report on the population properties of 76 compact binary mergers detected with gravitational waves below a false alarm rate of 1 per year through GWTC-3. The catalog contains three classes of binary mergers: BBH, BNS, and NSBH mergers. We infer the BNS merger rate to be between 10 Gpc3yr1\rm{Gpc^{-3} yr^{-1}} and 1700 Gpc3yr1\rm{Gpc^{-3} yr^{-1}} and the NSBH merger rate to be between 7.8 Gpc3yr1\rm{Gpc^{-3}\, yr^{-1}} and 140 Gpc3yr1\rm{Gpc^{-3} yr^{-1}} , assuming a constant rate density versus comoving volume and taking the union of 90% credible intervals for methods used in this work. Accounting for the BBH merger rate to evolve with redshift, we find the BBH merger rate to be between 17.9 Gpc3yr1\rm{Gpc^{-3}\, yr^{-1}} and 44 Gpc3yr1\rm{Gpc^{-3}\, yr^{-1}} at a fiducial redshift (z=0.2). We obtain a broad neutron star mass distribution extending from 1.20.2+0.1M1.2^{+0.1}_{-0.2} M_\odot to 2.00.3+0.3M2.0^{+0.3}_{-0.3} M_\odot. We can confidently identify a rapid decrease in merger rate versus component mass between neutron star-like masses and black-hole-like masses, but there is no evidence that the merger rate increases again before 10 MM_\odot. We also find the BBH mass distribution has localized over- and under-densities relative to a power law distribution. While we continue to find the mass distribution of a binary's more massive component strongly decreases as a function of primary mass, we observe no evidence of a strongly suppressed merger rate above 60M\sim 60 M_\odot. The rate of BBH mergers is observed to increase with redshift at a rate proportional to (1+z)κ(1+z)^{\kappa} with κ=2.91.8+1.7\kappa = 2.9^{+1.7}_{-1.8} for z1z\lesssim 1. Observed black hole spins are small, with half of spin magnitudes below χi0.25\chi_i \simeq 0.25. We observe evidence of negative aligned spins in the population, and an increase in spin magnitude for systems with more unequal mass ratio

    Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and GEO

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    The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in April of 2019 and lasting six months, O3b starting in November of 2019 and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in April of 2020 and lasting 2 weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at https://gwosc.org. The main dataset, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figure

    Supplement: "Localization and broadband follow-up of the gravitational-wave transient GW150914" (2016, ApJL, 826, L13)

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    This Supplement provides supporting material for Abbott et al. (2016a). We briefly summarize past electromagnetic (EM) follow-up efforts as well as the organization and policy of the current EM follow-up program. We compare the four probability sky maps produced for the gravitational-wave transient GW150914, and provide additional details of the EM follow-up observations that were performed in the different bands

    Multimessenger Search for Sources of Gravitational Waves and High-Energy Neutrinos: Results for Initial LIGO-Virgo and IceCube

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    We report the results of a multimessenger search for coincident signals from the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories and the partially completed IceCube high-energy neutrino detector, including periods of joint operation between 2007-2010. These include parts of the 2005-2007 run and the 2009-2010 run for LIGO-Virgo, and IceCube's observation periods with 22, 59 and 79 strings. We find no significant coincident events, and use the search results to derive upper limits on the rate of joint sources for a range of source emission parameters. For the optimistic assumption of gravitational-wave emission energy of 10210^{-2}\,M_\odotc2^2 at 150\sim 150\,Hz with 60\sim 60\,ms duration, and high-energy neutrino emission of 105110^{51}\,erg comparable to the isotropic gamma-ray energy of gamma-ray bursts, we limit the source rate below 1.6×1021.6 \times 10^{-2}\,Mpc3^{-3}yr1^{-1}. We also examine how combining information from gravitational waves and neutrinos will aid discovery in the advanced gravitational-wave detector era

    Effects of Data Quality Vetoes on a Search for Compact Binary Coalescences in Advanced LIGO's First Observing Run

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    The first observing run of Advanced LIGO spanned 4 months, from September 12, 2015 to January 19, 2016, during which gravitational waves were directly detected from two binary black hole systems, namely GW150914 and GW151226. Confident detection of gravitational waves requires an understanding of instrumental transients and artifacts that can reduce the sensitivity of a search. Studies of the quality of the detector data yield insights into the cause of instrumental artifacts and data quality vetoes specific to a search are produced to mitigate the effects of problematic data. In this paper, the systematic removal of noisy data from analysis time is shown to improve the sensitivity of searches for compact binary coalescences. The output of the PyCBC pipeline, which is a python-based code package used to search for gravitational wave signals from compact binary coalescences, is used as a metric for improvement. GW150914 was a loud enough signal that removing noisy data did not improve its significance. However, the removal of data with excess noise decreased the false alarm rate of GW151226 by more than two orders of magnitude, from 1 in 770 years to less than 1 in 186000 years.Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures, published versio

    Search for Eccentric Black Hole Coalescences during the Third Observing Run of LIGO and Virgo

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    Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70M>70 MM_\odot) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e0.30 < e \leq 0.3 at 0.330.33 Gpc3^{-3} yr1^{-1} at 90\% confidence level.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure

    Search for continuous gravitational waves from 20 accreting millisecond x-ray pulsars in O3 LIGO data

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    First joint observation by the underground gravitational-wave detector KAGRA with GEO 600

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    We report the results of the first joint observation of the KAGRA detector with GEO 600. KAGRA is a cryogenic and underground gravitational-wave detector consisting of a laser interferometer with 3 km arms, located in Kamioka, Gifu, Japan. GEO 600 is a British-German laser interferometer with 600 m arms, located near Hannover, Germany. GEO 600 and KAGRA performed a joint observing run from April 7 to 20, 2020. We present the results of the joint analysis of the GEO-KAGRA data for transient gravitational-wave signals, including the coalescence of neutron-star binaries and generic unmodeled transients. We also perform dedicated searches for binary coalescence signals and generic transients associated with gamma-ray burst events observed during the joint run. No gravitational-wave events were identified. We evaluate the minimum detectable amplitude for various types of transient signals and the spacetime volume for which the network is sensitive to binary neutron-star coalescences. We also place lower limits on the distances to the gamma-ray bursts analyzed based on the non-detection of an associated gravitational-wave signal for several signal models, including binary coalescences. These analyses demonstrate the feasibility and utility of KAGRA as a member of the global gravitational-wave detector network
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