GWTC-4.0: Methods for Identifying and Characterizing Gravitational-wave Transients

TL;DR

This paper details the advanced data analysis methods used to produce the GWTC-4.0 catalog, which includes identifying, modeling, and characterizing gravitational-wave transients from the first part of the fourth observing run of LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA.

Contribution

It introduces new analysis techniques and workflows specifically developed for the GWTC-4.0 catalog from the latest observing run.

Findings

Successful identification of gravitational-wave transients

Enhanced data quality assessment methods

Comprehensive characterization of detected signals

Abstract

The Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC) is a collection of candidate gravitational-wave transient signals identified and characterized by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration. Producing the contents of the GWTC from detector data requires complex analysis methods. These comprise techniques to model the signal; identify the transients in the data; evaluate the quality of the data and mitigate possible instrumental issues; infer the parameters of each transient; compare the data with the waveform models for compact binary coalescences; and handle the large amount of results associated with all these different analyses. In this paper, we describe the methods employed to produce the catalog's fourth release, GWTC-4.0, focusing on the analysis of the first part of the fourth observing run of Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA.