Effects of data quality vetoes on a search for compact binary coalescences in Advanced LIGO's first observing run

Abbott, B P and Jawahar, S and Lockerbie, N A and Tokmakov, K V, LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration (2018) Effects of data quality vetoes on a search for compact binary coalescences in Advanced LIGO's first observing run. Classical and Quantum Gravity, 35 (6). 065010. ISSN 0264-9381 (https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/aaaafa)

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Abstract

The first observing run of Advanced LIGO spanned 4 months, from 12 September 2015 to 19 January 2016, during which gravitational waves were directly detected from two binary black hole systems, namely GW150914 and GW151226. Confident detection of gravitational waves requires an understanding of instrumental transients and artifacts that can reduce the sensitivity of a search. Studies of the quality of the detector data yield insights into the cause of instrumental artifacts and data quality vetoes specific to a search are produced to mitigate the effects of problematic data. In this paper, the systematic removal of noisy data from analysis time is shown to improve the sensitivity of searches for compact binary coalescences. The output of the PyCBC pipeline, which is a python-based code package used to search for gravitational wave signals from compact binary coalescences, is used as a metric for improvement. GW150914 was a loud enough signal that removing noisy data did not improve its significance. However, the removal of data with excess noise decreased the false alarm rate of GW151226 by more than two orders of magnitude, from 1 in 770 yr to less than 1 in 186 000 yr.

  • Item type:Article
    ID code:63695
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    14 February 2018
    Published
    29 January 2018
    Accepted
    Notes:Please consult manuscript for full attribution details.
    Subjects:Science > Physics
    Department:Faculty of Science > Physics
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:11 Apr 2018 23:16
    Last modified:17 Apr 2024 00:29
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/63695
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