Obtaining Gravitational Waves from Inspiral Binary Systems using LIGO data

TL;DR

This paper discusses the theoretical background and data analysis methods used to detect gravitational waves from inspiral binary systems with LIGO, demonstrating an 85% recovery rate of injected signals.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive data analysis methodology based on matched filtering for detecting gravitational waves in LIGO data, with experimental validation.

Findings

Recovered 85% of injected GW signals

Validated the effectiveness of the matched filter algorithm

Provided insights into GW detection from binary systems

Abstract

The discovery of the astrophysical events GW150926 and GW151226 has experimentally confirmed the existence of gravitational waves (GW) and has demonstrated the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This finding marks the beginning of a new era that will reveal unexpected features of our universe. This work presents a basic insight to the fundamental theory of GW emitted by inspiral binary systems and describes the scientific and technological efforts developed to measure these waves using the interferometer-based detector called LIGO. Subsequently, the work presents a comprehensive data analysis methodology based on the matched filter algorithm, which aims to recovery GW signals emitted by inspiral binary systems of astrophysical sources. This algorithm was evaluated with freely available LIGO data containing injected GW waveforms. Results of the experiments performed to assess detection accuracy showed the recovery of 85% of the injected GW.