LIGO's "Science Reach"

TL;DR

LIGO aims to explore the universe through gravitational wave detection, where even non-detections provide valuable scientific insights, and this paper discusses its current and future scientific potential.

Contribution

This paper quantitatively describes the scientific potential and reach of both current and future LIGO gravitational wave detectors.

Findings

First-generation LIGO sensitivity is sufficient for meaningful scientific limits.

Future LIGO upgrades will expand observational capabilities.

Non-detections can set important astrophysical constraints.

Abstract

Technical discussions of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) sensitivity often focus on its effective sensitivity to gravitational waves in a given band; nevertheless, the goal of the LIGO Project is to ``do science.'' Exploiting this new observational perspective to explore the Universe is a long-term goal, toward which LIGO's initial instrumentation is but a first step. Nevertheless, the first generation LIGO instrumentation is sensitive enough that even non-detection --- in the form of an upper limit --- is also informative. In this brief article I describe in quantitative terms some of the science we can hope to do with first and future generation LIGO instrumentation: it short, the ``science reach'' of the detector we are building and the ones we hope to build.