Journal article
Implementation and testing of the first prompt search for gravitational wave transients with electromagnetic counterparts
J Abadie, BP Abbott, R Abbott, TD Abbott, M Abernathy, T Accadia, F Acernese, C Adams, R Adhikari, C Affeldt, M Agathos, P Ajith, B Allen, GS Allen, E Amador Ceron, D Amariutei, RS Amin, SB Anderson, WG Anderson, K Arai Show all
Astronomy and Astrophysics | EDP SCIENCES S A | Published : 2012
Abstract
Aims. A transient astrophysical event observed in both gravitational wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) channels would yield rich scientific rewards. A first program initiating EM follow-ups to possible transient GW events has been developed and exercised by the LIGO and Virgo community in association with several partners. In this paper, we describe and evaluate the methods used to promptly identify and localize GW event candidates and to request images of targeted sky locations. Methods. During two observing periods (Dec. 17, 2009 to Jan. 8, 2010 and Sep. 2 to Oct. 20, 2010), a low-latency analysis pipeline was used to identify GW event candidates and to reconstruct maps of possible sky lo..
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Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society, and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction and operation of the GEO600 detector, and the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of gravitational wave research by these agencies and by the Australian Research Council, the International Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of Australia, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of Italy, the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, the Conselleria d'Economia Hisenda i Innovacio of the Govern de les Illes Balears, the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter supported by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the FOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish Science, the Royal Society, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Carnegie Trust, the Leverhulme Trust, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Research Corporation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The authors acknowledge support for TAROT from the French Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres and Ministere de l'Enseignement Superieur et de la Recherche. The observations by ROTSE-III were supported by NASA grant NNX08AV63G and NSF grant PHY-0801007. The work with Swift was partially supported through a NASA grant/cooperative agreement number NNX09AL61G to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The contribution from the "Pi of the Sky" group was financed by the Polish Ministry of Science in 2008-2011 as a research project. We thank Joshua S. Bloom for useful discussions on the rates of PTF transients and their classification. This document has been assigned LIGO Laboratory document number LIGO-P1000061-v19.