Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA
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 deg2 requires at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of ∼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.
- Publication:
-
Living Reviews in Relativity
- Pub Date:
- April 2018
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s41114-018-0012-9
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1304.0670
- Bibcode:
- 2018LRR....21....3A
- Keywords:
-
- Gravitational waves;
- Gravitational-wave detectors;
- Electromagnetic counterparts;
- Data analysis;
- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- 52 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables. We have updated the detector sensitivities (including the A+ and AdV+ upgrade)