Abstract
Abstract We present the second Open Gravitational-wave Catalog (2-OGC) of compact-binary coalescences, obtained from the complete set of public data from Advanced LIGO’s first and second observing runs. For the first time we also search public data from the Virgo observatory. The sensitivity of our search benefits from updated methods of ranking candidate events including the effects of nonstationary detector noise and varying network sensitivity; in a separate targeted binary black hole merger search we also impose a prior distribution of binary component masses. We identify a population of 14 binary black hole merger events with probability of astrophysical origin >0.5 as well as the binary neutron star merger GW170817. We confirm the previously reported events GW170121, GW170304, and GW170727 and also report GW151205, a new marginal binary black hole merger with a primary mass of that may have formed through hierarchical merger. We find no additional significant binary neutron star merger or neutron star–black hole merger events. To enable deeper follow-up as our understanding of the underlying populations evolves, we make available our comprehensive catalog of events, including the subthreshold population of candidates and posterior samples from parameter inference of the 30 most significant binary black hole candidates.
Highlights
The Advanced LIGO (Aasi et al 2015) and Virgo (Acernese et al 2015) observatories have ushered in the age of gravitational-wave astronomy
We identify a population of 14 binary black hole mergers with pastro > 0.5 along with the GW170817 binary neutron star merger
Ten binary black hole mergers and a single binary neutron star merger have been reported in this period by the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations (Abbott et al 2019a)
Summary
The Advanced LIGO (Aasi et al 2015) and Virgo (Acernese et al 2015) observatories have ushered in the age of gravitational-wave astronomy. We improve over the BBH focused analysis introduced in Nitz et al (2019a) by considering an explicit population prior (Dent & Veitch 2014) This focused approach is most directly comparable to the results of (Venumadhav et al 2019b), which considers only binary black hole mergers, rather than a broad parameter search such as employed in Abbott et al (2019a). When we apply a ranking to search candidates that optimizes search sensitivity for a population of BBH mergers similar to that already detected, we identify a further 6 such mergers with a probability of astrophysical origin above 50% These include GW170818 and GW170729 which were reported in Abbott et al (2019a) along with GW170121, GW170727, and GW170304 which were reported in Venumadhav et al (2019b). Our results are broadly consistent with both Venumadhav et al (2019b) and Abbott et al (2019a)
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