Low-latency gravitational wave alert products and their performance at the time of the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the low-latency gravitational wave alert system during LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's O4 run, demonstrating its performance, latency, and data accuracy using simulated and real-time data to support multi-messenger astronomy.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed performance assessment of early warning triggers and low-latency alert infrastructure during O4, including median latency measurements and data product validation.

Findings

Median latency for full searches is 29.5 seconds.

Early warning triggers have a median latency of -3.1 seconds.

Data products show high consistency and accuracy during O4.

Abstract

Multi-messenger searches for BNS and NSBH mergers are currently one of the most exciting areas of astronomy. The search for joint electromagnetic and neutrino counterparts to GWs has resumed with O4. To support this effort, public semi-automated data products are sent in near real-time and include localization and source properties to guide complementary observations. In preparation for O4, we have conducted a study using a simulated population of compact binaries and a MDC in the form of a real-time replay to optimize and profile the software infrastructure and scientific deliverables. End-to-end performance was tested, including data ingestion, running online search pipelines, performing annotations, and issuing alerts to the astrophysics community. We present an overview of the low-latency infrastructure and the performance of the data products that are now being released during O4 based on the MDC. We report the expected median latency for the preliminary alert of full bandwidth searches (29.5s) and show consistency and accuracy of released data products using the MDC. For the first time, we report the expected median latency for triggers from early warning searches (-3.1s), which are new in O4 and target neutron star mergers during inspiral phase. This paper provides a performance overview for LVK low-latency alert infrastructure and data products using the MDC and serves as a useful reference for the interpretation of O4 detections.