Living Reviews in Relativity: “Prospects for Observing and Localizing Gravitational-Wave Transients with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo”

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Living Reviews in Relativity has published a new article on “Prospects for Observing and Localizing Gravitational-Wave Transients with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo” by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration on 8 February 2016.

Please find the abstract and further details below.

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PUB.NO. lrr-2016-1
B. P. Abbott et al. (The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration)
“Prospects for Observing and Localizing Gravitational-Wave Transients with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo”

ACCEPTED: 2016-01-22
PUBLISHED: 2016-02-08

FULL ARTICLE AT:
http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2016-1

ABSTRACT:
We present a possible observing scenario for the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo 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 determine the expected 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 considered the most promising 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 deg^2 to 20 deg^2 will require at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of ~2 of each other and with a broad frequency bandwidth. Should the third LIGO detector be relocated to India as expected, a significant fraction of gravitational-wave signals will be localized to a few square degrees by gravitational-wave observations alone.

UPCOMING ARTICLES AT:
http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/upcoming.html