16002528
Testing the LIGO inspiral analysis with hardware injections
Injection of simulated binary inspiral signals into detector hardware provides an excellent test of the inspiral detection pipeline. By recovering the physical parameters of an injected signal, we test our understanding of both instrumental calibration and the data analysis pipeline. We describe an inspiral search code and results from hardware injection tests and demonstrate that injected signals can be recovered by the data analysis pipeline. The parameters of the recovered signals match those of the injected signals.
42670702
Accuracy of gravitational waveform models for observing neutron-star–black-hole binaries in Advanced LIGO
Gravitational waves radiated by the coalescence of compact-object binaries containing a neutron star and a black hole are one of the most interesting sources for the ground-based gravitational-wave observatories Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. Advanced LIGO will be sensitive to the inspiral of a 1.4M⊙ neutron star into a 10M⊙ black hole to a maximum distance of ∼900  Mpc. Achieving this sensitivity and extracting the physics imprinted in observed signals requires accurate modeling of the binary to construct template waveforms. In a neutron-star–black-hole binary, the black hole may have significant angular momentum (spin), which affects the phase evolution of the emitted gravitational waves. We investigate the ability of currently available post-Newtonian templates to model the gravitational waves emitted during the inspiral phase of neutron-star–black-hole binaries. We restrict to the case where the spin of the black hole is aligned with the orbital angular momentum and compare several post-Newtonian approximants. We examine restricted amplitude post-Newtonian waveforms that are accurate to third-and-a-half post-Newtonian order in the orbital dynamics and complete to second-and-a-half post-Newtonian order in the spin dynamics. We also consider post-Newtonian waveforms that include the recently derived third-and-a-half post-Newtonian order spin-orbit correction and the third post-Newtonian order spin-orbit tail correction. We compare these post-Newtonian approximants to the effective-one-body waveforms for spin-aligned binaries. For all of these waveform families, we find that there is a large disagreement between different waveform approximants, starting at low to moderate black hole spins, particularly for binaries where the spin is antialigned with the orbital angular momentum. The match between the TaylorT4 and TaylorF2 approximants is ∼0.8 for a binary with m_BH/m_NS∼4 and χ_BH = cJ_BH/Gm^(2)_(BH)∼0.4. We show that the divergence between the gravitational waveforms begins in the early inspiral at v∼0.2 for χ_BH∼0.4. Post-Newtonian spin corrections beyond those currently known will be required for optimal detection searches and to measure the parameters of neutron-star–black-hole binaries. The strong dependence of the gravitational-wave signal on the spin dynamics will make it possible to extract significant astrophysical information from detected systems with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo.
2667484
Investigating the effect of precession on searches for neutron-star-black-hole binaries with Advanced LIGO
The first direct detection of neutron-star– black-hole binaries will likely be made with gravitational-wave observatories. Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo will be able to observe neutron-star– black-hole mergers at a maximum distance of 900 Mpc. To achieve this sensitivity, gravitational-wave searches will rely on using a bank of filter waveforms that accurately model the expected gravitational-wave signal. The emitted signal will depend on the masses of the black hole and the neutron star and also the angular momentum of both components. The angular momentum of the black hole is expected to be comparable to the orbital angular momentum when the system is emitting gravitational waves in Advanced LIGO’s and Advanced Virgo’s sensitive band. This angular momentum will affect the dynamics of the inspiralling system and alter the phase evolution of the emitted gravitational-wave signal. In addition, if the black hole’s angular momentum is not aligned with the orbital angular momentum, it will cause the orbital plane of the system to precess. In this work we demonstrate that if the effect of the black hole’s angular momentum is neglected in the waveform models used in gravitational-wave searches, the detection rate of (10+1.4)M_⊙ neutron-star– black-hole systems with isotropic spin distributions would be reduced by 33%–37% in comparison to a hypothetical perfect search at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio threshold. The error in this measurement is due to uncertainty in the post-Newtonian approximations that are used to model the gravitational-wave signal of neutron-star– black-hole inspiralling binaries. We describe a new method for creating a bank of filter waveforms where the black hole has nonzero angular momentum that is aligned with the orbital angular momentum. With this bank we find that the detection rate of (10+1.4)M_⊙ neutron-star– black-hole systems would be reduced by 26%–33%. Systems that will not be detected are ones where the precession of the orbital plane causes the gravitational-wave signal to match poorly with nonprecessing filter waveforms. We identify the regions of parameter space where such systems occur and suggest methods for searching for highly precessing neutron-star– black-hole binaries.
2754505
Using the inspiral program to search for gravitational waves from low-mass binary inspiral
The INSPIRAL program is the LIGO Scientific Collaboration's computational engine for the search for gravitational waves from binary neutron stars and sub-solar mass black holes. We describe how this program, which makes use of the FINDCHIRP algorithm, is integrated into a sophisticated data analysis pipeline that was used in the search for low-mass binary inspirals in data taken during the second LIGO science run.
51807515
Data formats for numerical relativity waves
This document proposes data formats to exchange numerical relativity results, in particular gravitational waveforms. The primary goal is to further the interaction between gravitational-wave source modeling groups and the gravitational-wave data-analysis community. We present a simple and extendable format which is applicable to various kinds of gravitational wave sources including binaries of compact objects and systems undergoing gravitational collapse, but is nevertheless sufficiently general to be useful for other purposes.
59368902
Nonspinning searches for spinning binaries in ground-based detector data: Amplitude and mismatch predictions in the constant precession cone approximation
Current searches for compact binary mergers by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors assume for simplicity the two bodies are not spinning. If the binary contains compact objects with significant spin, then this can reduce the sensitivity of these searches, particularly for black hole--neutron star binaries. In this paper we investigate the effect of neglecting precession on the sensitivity of searches for spinning binaries using non-spinning waveform models. We demonstrate that in the sensitive band of Advanced LIGO, the angle between the binary's orbital angular momentum and its total angular momentum is approximately constant. Under this \emph{constant precession cone} approximation, we show that the gravitational-wave phasing is modulated in two ways: a secular increase of the gravitational-wave phase due to precession and an oscillation around this secular increase. We show that this secular evolution occurs in precisely three ways, corresponding to physically different apparent evolutions of the binary's precession about the line of sight. We estimate the best possible fitting factor between \emph{any} non-precessing template model and a single precessing signal, in the limit of a constant precession cone. Our closed form estimate of the fitting-factor depends only the geometry of the in-band precession cone; it does not depend explicitly on binary parameters, detector response, or details of either signal model. The precessing black hole--neutron star waveforms least accurately matched by nonspinning waveforms correspond to viewing geometries where the precession cone sweeps the orbital plane repeatedly across the line of sight, in an unfavorable polarization alignment.
14562976
Black Holes with Short Hair
We present spherically symmetric black hole solutions for Einstein gravity coupled to anisotropic matter. We show that these black holes have arbitrarily short hair, and argue for stability by showing that they can arise from dynamical collapse. We also show that a recent "no short hair" theorem does not apply to these solutions.
123343445
Status of the g-2 experiment at BNL
The muon g-2 experiment at Brookhaven has successfully completed two exploratory runs using pion injection and direct muon injection for checkout and initial data taking. The main components of the experiment, which include the pion beam line, the superconducting storage ring and inflector magnets, the muon kicker and the lead-scintillating fiber calorimeters have been satisfactorily commissioned. First results on the anomalous magnetic moment of the positive muon from pion injection are in good agreement with previous experimental results for a(mu+) and a(mu-) from CERN and of comparable accuracy (13 ppm). Analysis of the 1998 muon injection run is in progress and expected to improve the precision to about 4 ppm. A first production run is scheduled for January 1999 with the goal of reaching the 1 ppm error level.
119648296
FastSim: A Fast Simulation for the SuperB Detector
We have developed a parameterized (fast) simulation for detector optimization and physics reach studies of the proposed SuperB Flavor Factory in Italy. Detector components are modeled as thin sections of planes, cylinders, disks or cones. Particle-material interactions are modeled using simplified cross-sections and formulas. Active detectors are modeled using parameterized response functions. Geometry and response parameters are configured using xml files with a custom-designed schema. Reconstruction algorithms adapted from BaBar are used to build tracks and clusters. Multiple sources of background signals can be merged with primary signals. Pattern recognition errors are modeled statistically by randomly misassigning nearby tracking hits. Standard BaBar analysis tuples are used as an event output. Hadronic B meson pair events can be simulated at roughly 10Hz.
1026408
Turduckening black holes: An Analytical and computational study
We provide a detailed analysis of several aspects of the turduckening technique for evolving black holes. At the analytical level we study the constraint propagation for a family of formulations of Einstein's field equations and identify under what conditions the turducken procedure is rigorously justified and under what conditions constraint violations will propagate to the outside of the black holes. We present high resolution spherically symmetric studies which verify our analytical predictions. Then we present three-dimensional simulations of single distorted black holes using different variations of the turduckening method and also the puncture method. We study the effect that these different methods have on the coordinate conditions, constraint violations, and extracted gravitational waves. We find that the waves agree up to small but nonvanishing differences, caused by escaping superluminal gauge modes. These differences become smaller with increasing detector location.
17140866
Extracting longitudinal shower development information from crystal calorimetry plus tracking
arXiv:0711.1593v2 [physics.ins-det] 11 Apr 2008 Extracting longitudinal shower development information from crystal calorimetry plus tracking D.N. Brown a , J. Ilic b , G.B. Mohanty b a Lawrence b Department Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom Abstract We present an approach to derive longitudinal shower development information from the longitudinally unsegmented B A B AR electromagnetic calorimeter by using tracking information. Our algorithm takes advantage of the good three- dimensional tracking resolution of B A B AR , which provides an independent geometric constraint on the shower as measured in the B A B AR crystal calorimeter. We show that adding the derived longitudinal shower development information to standard particle identiﬁcation algorithms signiﬁcantly improves the low-momentum separation of pions from electrons and muons. We also verify that the energy dependence of the electromagnetic shower development we measure is consistent with the prediction of a standard electromagnetic shower model. Key words: Particle Identiﬁcation, Longitudinal Shower Depth, Electromagnetic Calorimetry, Tracking PACS: 29.40.Gx, 29.40.Vj, 07.05.Kf 1. Introduction In present-day nuclear and particle physics ex- periments, inorganic scintillating crystals, such as NaI(Tl) and CsI(Tl), are often used to construct electromagnetic calorimeters when a precise mea- surement of the energy is required [1]. Crystal calorimeters can be ﬁnely segmented in the dimen- sion transverse to the shower development without sacriﬁcing energy resolution, thus providing a good measurement of the lateral shower development. However, engineering and energy resolution consid- erations prevent ﬁnely segmenting crystal calorime- ters along the direction of shower development. Both lateral and longitudinal shower development information are useful in charged particle identi- Email addresses: Dave Brown@lbl.gov (D.N. Brown), J.Ilic@warwick.ac.uk (J. Ilic), G.B.Mohanty@warwick.ac.uk (G.B. Mohanty). Preprint submitted to Elsevier Science ﬁcation (PID) algorithms, particularly in electron identiﬁcation. Because crystal calorimeters cannot provide direct longitudinal shower development in- formation, they lose an important input to particle identiﬁcation. In this paper, we present a technique in which longitudinal shower development information is indirectly extracted from a longitudinally unseg- mented crystal calorimeter in conjunction with a precise tracking system. This technique was devel- oped for use with the B A B AR [2] detector, but it can be applied at any detector which combines crystal calorimetry and precision tracking. It exploits the fact that B A B AR has a tracking system capable of precisely determining the three-dimensional trajec- tory of charged particles, and the fact that these trajectories are not in general collinear with the crystal axes. A similar algorithm has previously been used for sampling calorimeters with ﬁne lateral segmentation [3]. 11 April 2008