A study of the detection efficiency of the LIGO interferometers to transient sources

Abstract

The LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) detectors have now completed their fifth science run and have reached design sensitivity. Gravitational wavebursts only last for a few cycles within the characteristic frequency band of LIGO. This work focuses on the study of burst-like hardware injections during the fifth science run. Injected signals serve multiple purposes. Their primary goal is to study the cross-couplings between the gravitational wave channel and the auxilary channels. They also allow us to benchmark the ability of our search method to extract the signal parameters, thereby validating a whole portion of the analysis pipeline. Finally, they enable us to quantify the efficiency of our detectors depending on the strength and morphology of the signal. The stationarity of this parameter is also studied to ensure the variation of the sensibility is limited. Using theoretical estimations of the amplitude of the gravitational waves emitted by different sources, these efficiencies in turn allows us to have an estimate of the rate at which detection can be expected for each type of astrophysical object. This work does not reflect the scientific opinion of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and it was not reviewed by the collaboration.