Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA

KAGRA Collaboration, LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration

Research output: Contribution to journal(Systematic) Review article peer-review

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 deg(2) requires at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of similar to 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.
Original languageEnglish
Article number3
Number of pages57
JournalLiving Reviews in Relativity
Volume21
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Apr 2018
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Gravitational waves
  • Gravitational-wave detectors
  • Electromagnetic counterparts
  • Data analysis
  • BLACK-HOLE MERGERS
  • GAMMA-RAY BURSTS
  • SWIFT FOLLOW-UP
  • NEUTRON-STAR
  • ELECTROMAGNETIC SIGNALS
  • COMPACT BINARIES
  • EVENTS GW150914
  • SEARCH
  • COUNTERPART
  • RATES

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