The PyCBC search for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence

TL;DR

The paper details the PyCBC search method for detecting gravitational waves from binary mergers, successfully identifying key events and improving detection sensitivity in advanced LIGO data.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive search pipeline for gravitational waves that enhances noise mitigation and sensitivity, leading to confident detection of binary coalescence events.

Findings

Detected GW150914 and GW151226 black hole mergers.

Achieved a false-alarm rate as low as one per million years.

Increased sensitive volume for binary neutron star detection by 30%.

Abstract

We describe the PyCBC search for gravitational waves from compact-object binary coalescences in advanced gravitational-wave detector data. The search was used in the first Advanced LIGO observing run and unambiguously identified two black hole binary mergers, GW150914 and GW151226. At its core, the PyCBC search performs a matched-filter search for binary merger signals using a bank of gravitational-wave template waveforms. We provide a complete description of the search pipeline including the steps used to mitigate the effects of noise transients in the data, identify candidate events and measure their statistical significance. The analysis is able to measure false-alarm rates as low as one per million years, required for confident detection of signals. Using data from initial LIGO's sixth science run, we show that the new analysis reduces the background noise in the search, giving a 30% increase in sensitive volume for binary neutron star systems over previous searches.