Prospects and challenges in the electromagnetic follow-up of LIGO-Virgo gravitational wave transients
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Vitale_Prospects and challenges.pdf
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790.54 KB
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Author(s)
Vitale, Salvatore
Date Issued
July 2014
Journal
Proceedings of SPIE--the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers
Publisher
SPIE
Citation
Vitale, Salvatore. “Prospects and Challenges in the Electromagnetic Follow-up of LIGO-Virgo Gravitational Wave Transients.” Proceedings of SPIE--the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, SPIE, 2014. © 2014 SPIE
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The kilometer-scale ground based gravitational wave (GW) detectors, LIGO and Virgo, are being upgraded to their advanced configurations. We expect the two LIGO observatories to undertake a 3 month science run in 2015 with a limited sensitivity. Virgo should come online in 2016, and join LIGO for a 6 month science run. Through a sequence of science runs and commissioning periods, the final sensitivity should be reached by ~2019. LIGO and Virgo are expected to deliver the first direct detection of gravitational wave transients in the next few years. Most of the known sources of GWs targeted by LIGO and Virgo will likely be luminous in the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum as well. Compact binary coalescences are thought to be progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts, while long gamma-ray bursts are likely to be associated with core collapse supernova. A joint detection of gravitational and EM radiation may help confirm these associations, and expand our understanding of those astrophysical systems. Due to the transient nature, a search for the EM counterparts to GW events should be done with the shortest latency. In this paper we describe the EM follow-up program of Advanced LIGO and Virgo, from the search for GWs to the production of sky maps. Furthermore, we quantify the expected sky localization errors in the first two years of operation of the advanced detectors network.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
LIGO (Observatory : Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2057142
