Prospects for Observing and Localizing Gravitational-Wave Transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA

TL;DR

This paper estimates the future capabilities of the Advanced LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA gravitational-wave detectors in observing and localizing transient signals from compact binary mergers, aiding multi-messenger astronomy planning.

Contribution

It provides detailed sensitivity and localization forecasts for upcoming observing runs, incorporating planned upgrades and the addition of KAGRA to the network.

Findings

Median sky localization will improve from hundreds to tens of square degrees.

Sensitivity estimates for O3, O4, and O5 runs are provided.

Localization accuracy for different binary systems is quantified.

Abstract

We present our current best estimate of the plausible observing scenarios for the Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA gravitational-wave detectors over the next several years, with the intention of providing information to facilitate planning for multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. We estimate the sensitivity of the network to transient gravitational-wave signals for the third (O3), fourth (O4) and fifth observing (O5) runs, including the planned upgrades of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. We study the capability of the network to determine the sky location of the source for gravitational-wave signals from the inspiral of binary systems of compact objects, that is BNS, NSBH, and BBH systems. The ability to localize the sources is given as a sky-area probability, luminosity distance, and comoving volume. The median sky localization area (90\% credible region) is expected to be a few hundreds of square degrees for all types of binary systems during O3 with the Advanced LIGO and Virgo (HLV) network. The median sky localization area will improve to a few tens of square degrees during O4 with the Advanced LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA (HLVK) network. We evaluate sensitivity and localization expectations for unmodeled signal searches, including the search for intermediate mass black hole binary mergers.