Report on the first binary black hole inspiral search in LIGO data

Abstract

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration is currently engaged in the first search for binary black hole inspiral signals in real data. We are using the data from the second LIGO science run and we focus on inspiral signals coming from binary systems with component masses between 3 and 20 solar masses. We describe the analysis methods used and report on preliminary estimates for the sensitivities of the LIGO instruments during the second science run.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. Added references for section 2, corrected figure 1. To appear in CQG, in a special issue on the proceedings of the 9th Annual Gravitational Wave Data Analysis Workshop (GWDAW), Annecy, France, Dec. 200