Visualizing the Number of Existing and Future Gravitational-Wave Detections from Merging Double Compact Objects

TL;DR

This paper visualizes current and future gravitational-wave detections from double compact objects, illustrating the exponential growth in observations and potential scientific opportunities with next-generation detectors.

Contribution

It provides visualizations of existing detections and forecasts future observations, including a publicly available code to explore detection growth.

Findings

Current detections summarized up to O3

Future detectors could observe millions of events annually

Exponential increase in gravitational-wave observations anticipated

Abstract

How many gravitational-wave observations from double compact object mergers have we seen to date? This seemingly simple question surprisingly yields a somewhat ambiguous answer that depends on the chosen data-analysis pipeline, detection threshold and other underlying assumptions. To illustrate this we provide visualizations of the number of existing detections from double compact object mergers by the end of the third observing run (O3) based on recent results from the literature. Additionally, we visualize the expected number of observations from future-generation detectors, highlighting the possibility of up to millions of detections per year by the time next-generation ground-based detectors like Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope come online. We present a publicly available code that highlights the exponential growth in gravitational-wave observations in the coming decades and the exciting prospects of gravitational-wave (astro)physics.