Network sensitivity to geographical configuration

TL;DR

This paper compares different configurations of the global gravitational wave detector network, showing that geographic placement significantly affects detection rates in coincident analysis but less so in coherent analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism to evaluate network configurations and demonstrates the sensitivity of network performance to geographic placement using a new figure-of-merit.

Findings

Detection rate varies greatly with detector location in coincident analysis.

Coherent analysis shows less sensitivity to geographic configuration.

Network quality is highly dependent on detector placement under certain analysis methods.

Abstract

Gravitational wave astronomy will require the coordinated analysis of data from the global network of gravitational wave observatories. Questions of how to optimally configure the global network arise in this context. We have elsewhere proposed a formalism which is employed here to compare different configurations of the network, using both the coincident network analysis method and the coherent network analysis method. We have constructed a network model to compute a figure-of-merit based on the detection rate for a population of standard-candle binary inspirals. We find that this measure of network quality is very sensitive to the geographic location of component detectors under a coincident network analysis, but comparatively insensitive under a coherent network analysis.