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 deg2to 20 deg2will 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.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 1 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-39 |
Number of pages | 39 |
Journal | Living Reviews in Relativity |
Volume | 19 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 8 2016 |
Keywords
- Data analysis
- Electromagnetic counterparts
- Gravitational waves
- Gravitational-wave detectors
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)