Journal article

Observing gravitational-wave transient GW150914 with minimal assumptions

BP Abbott, R Abbott, TD Abbott, MR Abernathy, F Acernese, K Ackley, C Adams, T Adams, P Addesso, RX Adhikari, VB Adya, C Affeldt, M Agathos, K Agatsuma, N Aggarwal, OD Aguiar, L Aiello, A Ain, P Ajith, B Allen Show all

Physical Review D | Published : 2016

Abstract

The gravitational-wave signal GW150914 was first identified on September 14, 2015, by searches for short-duration gravitational-wave transients. These searches identify time-correlated transients in multiple detectors with minimal assumptions about the signal morphology, allowing them to be sensitive to gravitational waves emitted by a wide range of sources including binary black hole mergers. Over the observational period from September 12 to October 20, 2015, these transient searches were sensitive to binary black hole mergers similar to GW150914 to an average distance of ∼600 Mpc. In this paper, we describe the analyses that first detected GW150914 as well as the parameter estimation and ..

View full abstract

University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by National Science Foundation


Funding Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO 600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium. The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, Department of Science and Technology, India; Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India; the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad; the Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat and Conselleria d'Educacio; Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears; the National Science Centre of Poland; the European Commission; the Royal Society; the Scottish Funding Council; the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance; the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA); the Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO); the National Research Foundation of Korea; Industry Canada and the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation; the National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation; Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Leverhulme Trust; the Research Corporation; Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan; and the Kavli Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, STFC, MPS, INFN, CNRS and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for provision of computational resources. This article has been assigned the document number LIGO-P1500229.