GW070605: An Undisclosed Binary Neutron Star Hardware Injection in LIGO's Fifth Science Run

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a hardware injection in LIGO data that mimicked a binary neutron star merger, highlighting the importance of understanding detector artifacts and demonstrating improved detection capabilities of modern algorithms.

Contribution

The study uncovers a previously undocumented hardware injection in LIGO data and compares the sensitivity of modern detection algorithms to earlier methods, showing significant improvements.

Findings

Discovery of a hardware injection matching a candidate event

Modern algorithms show a 55-fold increase in detection rate at certain thresholds

No sensitivity improvement at null-result thresholds compared to older algorithms

Abstract

The authors wished to document the sensitivity improvement that has been contributed to the GW detection rate by detection algorithm research and development efforts, and set about re-analyzing S5 and S6 to determine the sensitive time-volumes of a modern pipeline and compare them to that of analysis algorithms of the day. To our surprise, this effort led to the discovery of GW070605, what at first appeared to be a previously unreported high significance binary neutron star merger at a time when only the Livingston detector (L1) was operating -- data that could not have been analyzed and a signal that could not have been discovered previously because the algorithms of the day required coincidence between two or more detectors. GW070605's end time occurs in LIGO's L1 detector at 2007-06-05 18:37:02 UTC, and is estimated to be a merger with component masses of 1.82$M_\odot$ and 1.24$M_\odot$. The GstLAL detection algorithm estimates that noise processes produce false positives at least as significant as GW070605 at a rate of $8.6\times10^{-10}$ per year. Disappointingly, subsequent investigations revealed the presence of a previously undocumented hardware injection in the L1 detector's Y arm end test mass' excitation channel, whose time and properties match that of GW070605. The injection does not appear in the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center list of hardware injections. We determined that while there is no sensitivity improvement between GstLAL and previous algorithms at the null-result threshold, there is marked improvement at above null-result thresholds; specifically, an approximately 55-times detection rate increase from initial-era algorithms at a FAR threshold of 1 per 7000 years.