Gravitational wave burst search in the Virgo C7 data

TL;DR

This paper reports on a gravitational wave burst search using Virgo C7 data, setting upper limits on event rates and analyzing binary black hole signals within a specific frequency range.

Contribution

It presents the first upper limits on gravitational wave burst event rates from Virgo C7 data and assesses the detection distance for binary black hole mergers.

Findings

Upper limit on event rate: 1.1 per day at 90% confidence.

Sensitivity to strain amplitude: $h_{rss} oughly 10^{-20}/\sqrt{Hz}$.

Maximum detection distance for certain black hole binaries: ~2.9 Mpc.

Abstract

A search for gravitational wave burst events has been performed with the Virgo C7 commissioning run data that have been acquired in September 2005 over five days. It focused on un-modeled short duration signals in the frequency range 150 Hz to 2 kHz. A search aimed at detecting the GW emission from the merger and ringdown phases of binary black hole coalescences was also carried out. An extensive understanding of the data was required to be able to handle a burst search using the output of only one detector. A 90% confidence level upper limit on the number of expected events given the Virgo C7 sensitivity curve has been derived as a function of the signal strength, for un-modeled gravitational wave search. The sensitivity of the analysis presented is, in terms of the root sum square strain amplitude, $h_{rss} \simeq 10^{-20} / \sqrt{Hz}$. This can be interpreted in terms of a frequentist upper limit on the rate ${\cal{R}}_{90%}$ of detectable gravitational wave bursts at the level of 1.1 events per day at 90% confidence level. From the binary black hole search, we obtained the distance reach at 50% and 90% efficiency as a function of the total mass of the final black hole. The maximal detection distance for non-spinning high and equal mass black hole binary system obtained by this analysis in C7 data is $\simeq$ 2.9 $\pm$ 0.1 Mpc for a detection efficiency of 50% for a binary of total mass $80 M_{\odot}$.