TY - JOUR
T1 - GWTC-4.0
T2 - Updating the Gravitational-wave Transient Catalog with Observations from the First Part of the Fourth LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Observing Run
AU - Abac, A. G.
AU - Abouelfettouh, I.
AU - Acernese, F.
AU - Ackley, K.
AU - Adamcewicz, C.
AU - Adhicary, S.
AU - Adhikari, D.
AU - Adhikari, N.
AU - Adhikari, R. X.
AU - Adkins, V. K.
AU - Afroz, S.
AU - Agapito, A.
AU - Agarwal, D.
AU - Agathos, M.
AU - Aggarwal, N.
AU - Aggarwal, S.
AU - Aguiar, O. D.
AU - Ahrend, I. L.
AU - Aiello, L.
AU - Ain, A.
AU - Ajith, P.
AU - Akcay, S.
AU - Akutsu, T.
AU - Albanesi, S.
AU - Ali, W.
AU - Al-Kershi, S.
AU - Alléné, C.
AU - Allocca, A.
AU - Al-Shammari, S.
AU - Altin, P. A.
AU - Alvarez-Lopez, S.
AU - Amar, W.
AU - Amarasinghe, O.
AU - Amato, A.
AU - Amicucci, F.
AU - Amra, C.
AU - Ananyeva, A.
AU - Anderson, S. B.
AU - Anderson, W. G.
AU - Andia, M.
AU - Ando, M.
AU - Andrés-Carcasona, M.
AU - Andric, T.
AU - Anglin, J.
AU - Ansoldi, S.
AU - Antelis, J. M.
AU - Antier, S.
AU - Aoumi, M.
AU - Appavuravther, E. Z.
AU - Appert, S.
AU - LIGO Scientific Collaboration
AU - Virgo Collaboration
AU - KAGRA Collaboration
AU - Bertolini, Alessandro
AU - Danilishin, Stefan
AU - Diksha, Diksha
AU - Guo, Yuefan
AU - Hild, Stefan
AU - Iandolo, Guido Alex
AU - Koekoek, Gideon
AU - Kranzhoff, Luise
AU - Massaro, Luca
AU - Silenzi, Laura
AU - Steinlechner, Jessica
AU - Steinlechner, Sebastian
AU - van den Brand, Johannes
AU - Vardaro, Marco
AU - Wöhler, Janis
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by NSF\u2019s LIGO Laboratory, which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max\u2013Planck\u2013Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO 600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium. The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies, as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India; the Department of Science and Technology, India; the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India; the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India; the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigaci\u00F3n (AEI); the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovaci\u00F3n y Universidades; the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR (PRTR-C17.I1); the ICSC\u2014CentroNazionale di Ricerca in High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing, funded by the European Union NextGenerationEU; the Comunitat Auton\u00F2ma de les Illes Balears through the Conselleria d\u2019Educaci\u00F3 i Universitats; the Conselleria d\u2019Innovaci\u00F3, Universitats, Ci\u00E8ncia i Societat Digital de la Generalitat Valen-ciana and the CERCA Programme Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain; the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange; the National Science Centre of Poland and the European Union\u2014European Regional Development Fund; the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP); the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education; the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); the Russian Science Foundation; the European Commission; the European Social Funds (ESF); the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF); the Royal Society; the Scottish Funding Council; the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance; the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA); the French Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO); the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS), Actions de Recherche Concert\u00E9es (ARC) and Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek\u2014Vlaanderen (FWO), Belgium; the Paris \u00CEle-de-France Region; the National Research, Development and Innovation Office of Hungary (NKFIH); the National Research Foundation of Korea; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI); the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovations; the International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR); the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong; the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); the Israel Science Foundation (ISF); the US\u2013Israel Binational Science Fund (BSF); the Leverhulme Trust; the Research Corporation; the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), Taiwan; the United States Department of Energy; and the Kavli Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, STFC, INFN, and CNRS for provision of computational resources.This work was supported by MEXT; the JSPS Leading-edge Research Infrastructure Program, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research 26000005, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas 2402: 24103006, 24103005, and 2905: JP17H06358, JP17H06361, and JP17H06364, JSPS Core-to-Core Program A. Advanced Research Networks, JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) 17H06133 and 20H05639, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas (A) 20A203: JP20H05854; the joint research program of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo; the National Research Foundation (NRF); the Computing Infrastructure Project of the Global Science experimental Data hub Center (GSDC) at KISTI; the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI); the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) in Korea; Academia Sinica (AS), the AS Grid Center (ASGC), and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan under grants including the Science Vanguard Research Program; the Advanced Technology Center (ATC) of NAOJ; and the Mechanical Engineering Center of KEK.Additional acknowledgments for support of individual authors may be found in the following document:https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-M2300033/public. For the purpose of open access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising. We request that citations to this Letter use \u201CA. G. Abacet al.(LIGO\u2013Virgo\u2013KAGRA Collaboration), \u2026\u201D or similar phrasing, depending on journal convention.Facility:LIGO.Software:Calibration of the LIGO strain data was performed with a GSTLAL-based calibration software pipeline (A. D. Vietset al.2018). Data-quality products and event-validation results were computed using the DMT (J. Zweizig2006), DQR (LIGO Scientific Collaboration & Virgo Collaboration2018), DQSEGDB (R. P. Fisheret al.2021), GWDETCHAR (D. Macleodet al.2021b), HVETO (J. R. Smithet al.2011),IDQ (R. Essicket al.2020), OMICRON(F. Robinetet al.2020) and PythonVirgoTools(Virgo Collaboration2021) software packages and contributing software tools. Analyses in this catalog relied upon the LALSUITEsoftware library (LIGO\u2013Virgo\u2013KAGRA Collaboration2018; K. Wette2020). The detection of the signals and subsequent significance evaluations in this catalog were performed with the GSTLAL-based inspiral software pipeline (C. Messicket al.2017; S. Sachdevet al.2019; C. Hannaet al.2020; K. Cannonet al.2021), with the MBTA pipeline (T. Adamset al.2016; F. Aubinet al.2021), and with the PyCBC (S. A. Usmanet al.2016; A. H. Nitzet al.2017; G. S. Davieset al.2020) and the CWB (S. Klimenko & G. Mitselmakher2004; S. Klimenkoet al.2011,2016) packages. Estimates of the noise spectra and glitch models were obtained using BayesWave(N. J. Cornish & T. B. Littenberg2015; T. B. Littenberget al.2016; N. J. Cornishet al.2021; T. Gupta & N. J. Cornish2024). Source-parameter estimation was performed with the BILBYlibrary (G. Ashtonet al.2019; I. M. Romero-Shawet al.2020) using the DYNESTYnested sampling package (J. S. Speagle2020). PESummarywas used to postprocess and collate parameter-estimation results (C. Hoy & V. Raymond2021). The various stages of the parameter-estimation analysis were managed with the ASIMOVlibrary (D. Williamset al.2023). Plots were prepared with MATPLOTLIB(J. D. Hunter2007), SEABORN (M. Waskom2021) and GWPY(D. M. Macleodet al.2021a). NUMPY(C. R. Harriset al.2020) and SciPy(P. Virtanenet al.2020) were used in the preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
PY - 2026/6/20
Y1 - 2026/6/20
N2 - Version 4.0 of the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-4.0) adds new candidates detected by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA observatories through the first part of the fourth observing run (O4a: 2023 May 24 15:00:00 to 2024 January 16 16:00:00 UTC) and a preceding engineering run. In these new data, we find 128 compact binary coalescence candidates that are identified by at least one of our search algorithms with a probability of astrophysical origin pastro = 0.5 and that are not vetoed during event validation. We also provide detailed source property measurements for 86 of these that have a false-alarm rate <1 yr-1. Based on the inferred component masses, these candidates are consistent with signals from binary black holes (BBHs) and neutron star–black hole binaries (GW230518_125908 and GW230529_181500). Median-inferred component masses of BBHs in the catalog now range from 5.79M? (GW230627_015337) to 137 (Formula presented) M? (GW231123_135430), while GW231123_135430 was probably produced by the most massive binary observed in the catalog. For the first time, we have discovered BBH signals with network signal-to-noise ratio exceeding 30, GW230814_230901 and GW231226_101520, enabling high-fidelity studies of the waveforms and astrophysical properties of these systems. Combined with the 90 candidates included in GWTC-3.0, the catalog now contains 218 candidates with pastro = 0.5 and not otherwise vetoed, more than doubling the size of the catalog and further opening our view of the gravitational-wave Universe.
AB - Version 4.0 of the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-4.0) adds new candidates detected by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA observatories through the first part of the fourth observing run (O4a: 2023 May 24 15:00:00 to 2024 January 16 16:00:00 UTC) and a preceding engineering run. In these new data, we find 128 compact binary coalescence candidates that are identified by at least one of our search algorithms with a probability of astrophysical origin pastro = 0.5 and that are not vetoed during event validation. We also provide detailed source property measurements for 86 of these that have a false-alarm rate <1 yr-1. Based on the inferred component masses, these candidates are consistent with signals from binary black holes (BBHs) and neutron star–black hole binaries (GW230518_125908 and GW230529_181500). Median-inferred component masses of BBHs in the catalog now range from 5.79M? (GW230627_015337) to 137 (Formula presented) M? (GW231123_135430), while GW231123_135430 was probably produced by the most massive binary observed in the catalog. For the first time, we have discovered BBH signals with network signal-to-noise ratio exceeding 30, GW230814_230901 and GW231226_101520, enabling high-fidelity studies of the waveforms and astrophysical properties of these systems. Combined with the 90 candidates included in GWTC-3.0, the catalog now contains 218 candidates with pastro = 0.5 and not otherwise vetoed, more than doubling the size of the catalog and further opening our view of the gravitational-wave Universe.
KW - Gravitational wave astronomy (675)
KW - Gravitational wave detectors (676)
KW - Gravitational wave sources (677)
KW - Neutron stars (1108)
KW - Stellar mass black holes (1611)
U2 - 10.3847/2041-8213/ae2c74
DO - 10.3847/2041-8213/ae2c74
M3 - Article
SN - 2041-8205
VL - 1004
JO - Astrophysical Journal Letters
JF - Astrophysical Journal Letters
IS - 2
M1 - L22
ER -