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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc, Astrophysics, High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, astro-ph.HE
Abstract:
We present a possible observing scenario for the Advanced LIGO and Advanced
Virgo gravitational wave detectors over the next decade, with the intention of
providing information to the astronomy community to facilitate planning for
multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. We determine the expected
sensitivity of the network to transient gravitational-wave signals, and study
the capability of the network to determine the sky location of the source. For
concreteness, we focus primarily on gravitational-wave signals from the
inspiral of binary neutron star (BNS) systems, as the source considered likely
to be the most common for detection and also promising for multimessenger
astronomy. We find that confident detections will likely require at least 2
detectors operating with BNS sensitive ranges of at least 100 Mpc, while ranges
approaching 200 Mpc should give at least ~1 BNS detection per year even under
pessimistic predictions of signal rates. The ability to localize the source of
the detected signals depends on the geographical distribution of the detectors
and their relative sensitivity, and can be as large as thousands of square
degrees with only 2 sensitive detectors operating. Determining the sky position
of a significant fraction of detected signals to areas of 5 sq deg to 20 sq deg
will require at least 3 detectors of sensitivity within a factor of ~2 of each
other and with a broad frequency bandwidth. Should one of the LIGO detectors be
relocated in India as expected, many gravitational-wave signals will be
localized to a few square degrees by gravitational-wave observations alone.