The Cosmic Coalescence Rates for Double Neutron Star Binaries

TL;DR

This paper updates the cosmic coalescence rates for double neutron star binaries, incorporating recent discoveries and statistical methods, significantly impacting gravitational wave detection expectations.

Contribution

It provides revised in-spiral rate estimates using a rigorous statistical approach that accounts for survey biases and small-number effects, based on the latest pulsar discoveries.

Findings

In-spiral rate increased by a factor of 5-7 due to new pulsar discovery

Predicted detection rates for initial LIGO are 1 per 10-630 years

Predicted detection rates for advanced LIGO are 10-500 per year

Abstract

This manuscript is an updated version of Kalogera et al. (2004) published in ApJ Letters to correct our calculation of the Galactic DNS in-spiral rate. The details of the original erratum submitted to ApJ Letters are given in page 6 of this manuscript. We report on the newly increased event rates due to the recent discovery of the highly relativistic binary pulsar J0737--3039 (Burgay et al. 2003). Using a rigorous statistical method, we present the calculations reported by Burgay et al., which produce a in-spiral rate for Galactic double neutron star (DNS) systems that is higher by a factor of 5-7 compared to estimates made prior to the new discovery. Our method takes into account known pulsar-survey selection effects and biases due to small-number statistics. This rate increase has dramatic implications for gravitational wave detectors. For the initial Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, the most probable detection rates for DNS in-spirals are one event per 10-630 yr; at 95% confidence, we obtain rates up to one per 3 yr. For the advanced LIGO detectors, the most probable rates are 10-500 events per year. These predictions, for the first time, bring the expectations for DNS detections by the initial LIGO detectors to the astrophysically relevant regime. We also use our models to predict that the large-scale Parkes Multibeam pulsar survey with acceleration searches could detect an average of four binary pulsars similar to those known at present.