C. D. Capano

The PyCBC search for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence

We describe the PyCBC search for gravitational waves from compactobject binary coalescences in advanced gravitational-wave detector data. The search was used in the first Advanced LIGO observing run and unambiguously identified two black hole binary mergers, GW150914 and GW151226. At its core, the PyCBC search performs a matched-filter search for binary merger signals using a bank of gravitational-wave template waveforms. We provide a complete description of the search pipeline including the steps used to mitigate the effects of noise transients in the data, identify candidate events and measure their statistical significance. The analysis is able to measure false-alarm rates as low as one per million years, required for confident detection of signals. Using data from initial LIGO’s sixth science run, we show that the new analysis reduces the background noise in the search, giving a 30% increase in sensitive volume for binary neutron star systems over previous searches.

Impact of higher harmonics in searching for gravitational waves from nonspinning binary black holes

Current searches for gravitational waves from coalescing binary black holes (BBH) use templates that only include the dominant harmonic. In this study we use effective-one-body multipolar waveforms calibrated to numerical-relativity simulations to quantify the effect of neglecting sub-dominant harmonics on the sensitivity of searches. We consider both signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the signal-based vetoes that are used to re-weight SNR. We find that neglecting sub-dominant modes when searching for non-spinning BBHs with component masses

Implementing a search for gravitational waves from binary black holes with nonprecessing spin

3\,M_{\odot} \leq m_1, m_2 \leq 200\,M_{\odot}

Multivariate Classification with Random Forests for Gravitational Wave Searches of Black Hole Binary Coalescence

and total mass

Observational tests of the black hole area increase law

M < 360\,M_{\odot}

Systematic errors in estimation of gravitational-wave candidate significance

in advanced LIGO results in a negligible reduction of the re-weighted SNR at detection thresholds. Sub-dominant modes therefore have no effect on the detection rates predicted for advanced LIGO. Furthermore, we find that if sub-dominant modes are included in templates the sensitivity of the search becomes worse if we use current search priors, due to an increase in false alarm probability. Templates would need to be weighted differently than what is currently done to compensate for the increase in false alarms. If we split the template bank such that sub-dominant modes are only used when

Comments on: "Echoes from the abyss: Evidence for Planck-scale structure at black hole horizons"

M \gtrsim 100\,M_{\odot}

Low significance of evidence for black hole echoes in gravitational wave data

and mass ratio

PyCBC Inference: A Python-based parameter estimation toolkit for compact binary coalescence signals.

q \gtrsim 4

Ligo-Cbc/Pycbc: Post-O2 Release 8

, we find that the sensitivity does improve for these intermediate mass-ratio BBHs, but the sensitive volume associated with these systems is still small compared to equal-mass systems. Using sub-dominant modes is therefore unlikely to substantially increase the probability of detecting gravitational waves from non-spinning BBH signals unless there is a relatively large population of intermediate mass-ratio BBHs in the universe.