Astronomy and astrophysics with gravitational waves in the Advanced Detector Era

📝 Abstract

With the advanced gravitational wave detectors coming on line in the next 5 years, we expect to make the first detections of gravitational waves from astrophysical sources, and study the properties of the waves themselves as tests of General Relativity. In addition, these gravitational waves will be powerful tools for the study of their astrophysical sources and source populations. They carry information that is quite complementary to what can be learned from electromagnetic or neutrino observations, probing the central gravitational engines that power the electromagnetic emissions. Preparations are being made to enable near-simultaneous observations of both gravitational wave and electromagnetic observations of transient sources, using low-latency search pipelines and rapid sky localization. We will review the many opportunities for multi-messenger astronomy and astrophysics with gravitational waves enabled by the advanced detectors, and the preparations that are being made to quickly and fully exploit them.

💡 Analysis

With the advanced gravitational wave detectors coming on line in the next 5 years, we expect to make the first detections of gravitational waves from astrophysical sources, and study the properties of the waves themselves as tests of General Relativity. In addition, these gravitational waves will be powerful tools for the study of their astrophysical sources and source populations. They carry information that is quite complementary to what can be learned from electromagnetic or neutrino observations, probing the central gravitational engines that power the electromagnetic emissions. Preparations are being made to enable near-simultaneous observations of both gravitational wave and electromagnetic observations of transient sources, using low-latency search pipelines and rapid sky localization. We will review the many opportunities for multi-messenger astronomy and astrophysics with gravitational waves enabled by the advanced detectors, and the preparations that are being made to quickly and fully exploit them.

📄 Content

arXiv:1112.1057v3 [gr-qc] 12 Mar 2012 Astronomy and astrophysics with gravitational waves in the Advanced Detector Era Alan J. Weinstein for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA E-mail: ajw@ligo.caltech.edu Abstract. With the advanced gravitational wave detectors coming on line in the next 5 years, we expect to make the first detections of gravitational waves from astrophysical sources, and study the properties of the waves themselves as tests of General Relativity. In addition, these gravitational waves will be powerful tools for the study of their astrophysical sources and source populations. They carry information that is quite complementary to what can be learned from electromagnetic or neutrino observations, probing the central gravitational engines that power the electromagnetic emissions at the outer layers of the source. Preparations are being made to enable near-simultaneous observations of both gravitational wave and electromagnetic observations of transient sources, using low-latency search pipelines and rapid sky localization. We will review the many opportunities for multi-messenger astronomy and astrophysics with gravitational waves enabled by the advanced detectors, and the preparations that are being made to quickly and fully exploit them. PACS Numbers: 04.30.Tv, 04.80.Nn, 95.55.Ym, 95.85.Sz.

1. Introduction In the coming years, advanced ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors will be coming online, observing the sky as a detection and analysis network. We refer to this as the Advanced Detector Era (ADE). The first detections, followed by a growing catalog of sources, will be a trove of astrophysical information about the properties of these extremely energetic systems. In this talk and paper, I briefly review some of the many ways that gravitational waves can inform us about those properties. There are many promising sources for gravitational waves. Transient sources include binary mergers, core-collapse supernovae, magnetar flares, and pulsar glitches. Some of these are believed to be the progenitors of gamma ray bursts (GRBs) or soft gamma repeaters (SGRs). Long-lived sources include continuous waves from rapidly spinning neutron stars, and the stochastic background from the early universe. The scope of this discussion will be limited mainly to binary mergers, with brief mention of other transient sources; we will refer the reader to excellent talks on many of these other subjects by speakers at this conference.
2. The GW detector network in the advanced detector era 2.1. The initial detector era: The initial LIGO [1] and Virgo [2] detectors completed their science runs in 2007. The “enhanced” LIGO [3] and Virgo [2] detectors ended data taking in October 2010. As of summer 2011, the H2 detector at LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) and the L1 detector at LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) are dismantled in preparation for Advanced LIGO installation. The H1 Enhanced LIGO detector at LHO is conducting a squeezed vacuum experiment in Fall 2011, after which, it too will be dismantled. During summer 2011, the Virgo [2] and GEO-HF [4] detectors are taking science data; see the talk at this conference by Mirko Prijatelj on GEO-HF. The Virgo detector will end observations in preparation for Advanced Virgo by the end of 2011. 2.2. Astrophysics with the initial detectors: The years 2004 through 2011 saw the publication of 65 papers [5] documenting the scientific results obtained from the initial and enhanced LIGO, GEO600 and Virgo detectors. These also include joint publications with the TAMA Collaboration in Japan (who operated a 300 meter interferometric detector near Tokyo [6]) and the AURIGA and ALLEGRO bar detector collaborations [7]. These papers reported on the performance of the detectors, and the results of searches (all negative) for gravitational waves from compact binary inspiral, merger and ringdown; GW bursts from supernovae, massive mergers, or magnetar excitations; continuous GWs from known pulsars or spinning neutron stars; and stochastic GWs from the early universe or unresolved astrophysical sources. We will discuss the prospects for detecting and studying GWs from transient sources (binary mergers and bursts) with the advanced detector network in Section 3 below. 2.3. The advanced detector era: The construction of the Advanced LIGO (aLIGO, [8]) detectors is around 50% complete, and installation has begun at LHO and LLO. Advanced LIGO construction will complete in 2014. Commissioning will commence, and first science runs are expected to commence in 2014–2015 at Hanford and Livingston. The Advanced Virgo detector [9] in Cascina, Italy and LCGT [10] in Japan will also come online in the same time-scale; see the talk at this conference by Giovanni Losurdo. It should be kept in mind that it took several years for the initial LIGO detectors to achieve design sensitivity. The advanced detectors ar

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