A comparison of methods for gravitational wave burst searches from LIGO and Virgo

TL;DR

This paper compares various methods for detecting burst gravitational waves using a network of LIGO and Virgo interferometers, demonstrating improved detection efficiency and source localization with combined data.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of burst detection methods and quantifies the benefits of a joint LIGO-Virgo network for gravitational wave searches.

Findings

Adding Virgo increases detection efficiency by 50%.

Joint analysis improves source localization accuracy.

Multiple detectors enhance detection confidence.

Abstract

The search procedure for burst gravitational waves has been studied using 24 hours of simulated data in a network of three interferometers (Hanford 4-km, Livingston 4-km and Virgo 3-km are the example interferometers). Several methods to detect burst events developed in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and Virgo collaboration have been studied and compared. We have performed coincidence analysis of the triggers obtained in the different interferometers with and without simulated signals added to the data. The benefits of having multiple interferometers of similar sensitivity are demonstrated by comparing the detection performance of the joint coincidence analysis with LSC and Virgo only burst searches. Adding Virgo to the LIGO detector network can increase by 50% the detection efficiency for this search. Another advantage of a joint LIGO-Virgo network is the ability to reconstruct the source sky position. The reconstruction accuracy depends on the timing measurement accuracy of the events in each interferometer, and is displayed in this paper with a fixed source position example.