1-OGC: The First Open Gravitational-wave Catalog of Binary Mergers from Analysis of Public Advanced LIGO Data

Alexander H Nitz,Alex B Nielsen,Duncan A Brown,Badri Krishnan,Collin Capano,Steven Reyes,Rebecca White

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab0108

Abstract

Abstract We present the first Open Gravitational-wave Catalog, obtained by using the public data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run to search for compact-object binary mergers. Our analysis is based on new methods that improve the separation between signals and noise in matched-filter searches for gravitational waves from the merger of compact objects. The three most significant signals in our catalog correspond to the binary black hole mergers GW150914, GW151226, and LVT151012. We assume a common population of binary black holes for these three signals by defining a region of parameter space that is consistent with these events. Under this assumption, we find that LVT151012 has a 97.6% probability of being astrophysical in origin. No other significant binary black hole candidates are found, nor did we observe any significant binary neutron star or neutron star–black hole candidates. We make available our complete catalog of events, including the subthreshold population of candidates.

Highlights

The Advanced LIGO gravitational wave observatories (Abbott et al 2016g) performed their first observing run (O1) from September 12, 2015 to January 19, 2016
The binary black hole mergers observed in this observing run have been reported by the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations (LVC) in Abbott et al (2016e,d,a)
The results presented here are generated using the data from the first observing run of Advanced LIGO which ran from September 12, 2015 to January 19, 2016

Summary

Introduction

The Advanced LIGO gravitational wave observatories (Abbott et al 2016g) performed their first observing run (O1) from September 12, 2015 to January 19, 2016. This provided a total of 51.5 days of coincident observations from the two detectors located in Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA. Since the publication of the results by Abbott et al (2016a,i), improvements to the data-analysis methods used (Abbott et al 2016c) have been implemented (Nitz et al 2017; Nitz 2018; Dal Canton & Harry 2017) Using these improvements, we re-analyze the O1 data and provide—for the first time—a full catalog of candidate events from a matched filter search for compact binary coalescences using the O1 data, which we call 1-OGC

Methods

Results

Conclusion