Low-latency Gravitational-wave Alerts for Multimessenger Astronomy during the Second Advanced LIGO and Virgo Observing Run

Creators: Abbott, B. P.; Abbott, R.; Adhikari, R. X.; Ananyeva, A.; Anderson, S. B.; Appert, S.; Arai, K.; Araya, M. C.; Barayoga, J. C.; Barish, B. C.; Billingsley, G.; Biscans, S.; Blackburn, J. K.; Bork, R.; Brooks, A. F.; Brunett, S.; Cahillane, C.; Callister, T. A.; Coughlin, M. W.; Couvares, P.; Coyne, D. C.; Ehrens, P.; Eichholz, J.; Etzel, T.; Feicht, J.; Gossan, S. E.; Grassia, P.; Gustafson, E. K.; Heptonstall, A. W.; Hulko, M.; Isi, M.; Kamai, B.; Kanner, J. B.; Kasprzack, M.; Kondrashov, V.; Korth, W. Z.; Kozak, D. B.; Lazzarini, A.; Lo, R. K. L.; Markowitz, A.; Maros, E.; Massinger, T. J.; Matichard, F.; McIver, J.; Meshkov, S.; Pedraza, M.; Quintero, E. A.; Reitze, D. H.; Richardson, J. W.; Robertson, N. A.; Rollins, J. G.; Sachdev, S.; Sanchez, E. J.; Sanchez, L. E.; Sun, L.; Taylor, R.; Torrie, C. I.; Trudeau, R. J.; Vajente, G.; Vass, S.; Venugopalan, G.; Wade, A. R.; Wallace, L.; Weinstein, A. J.; Willis, J. L.; Wipf, C. C.; Xiao, L.; Yamamoto, H.; Zhang, L.; Zucker, M. E.; Zweizig, J.; Barkett, K.; Chen, Y.; Li, X.; Ma, Y.; Pang, B.; Scheel, M.; Tso, R.; Varma, V.; Chatziioannou, K.; LIGO Scientific Collaboration; Virgo Collaboration

Abstract

Advanced LIGO's second observing run (O2), conducted from 2016 November 30 to 2017 August 25, combined with Advanced Virgo's first observations in 2017 August, witnessed the birth of gravitational-wave multimessenger astronomy. The first ever gravitational-wave detection from the coalescence of two neutron stars, GW170817, and its gamma-ray counterpart, GRB 170817A, led to an electromagnetic follow-up of the event at an unprecedented scale. Several teams from across the world searched for EM/neutrino counterparts to GW170817, paving the way for the discovery of optical, X-ray, and radio counterparts. In this article, we describe the online identification of gravitational-wave transients and the distribution of gravitational-wave alerts by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations during O2. We also describe the gravitational-wave observables that were sent in the alerts to enable searches for their counterparts. Finally, we give an overview of the online candidate alerts shared with observing partners during O2. Alerts were issued for 14 candidates, 6 of which have been confirmed as gravitational-wave events associated with the merger of black holes or neutron stars. Of the 14 alerts, 8 were issued less than an hour after data acquisition.

Additional Information

© 2019 The American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2019 January 28; revised 2019 February 18; accepted 2019 February 18; published 2019 April 25. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium. The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology, India, the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India, the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación, the Vicepresidència i Conselleria d'Innovació Recerca i Turisme and the Conselleria d'Educació i Universitat del Govern de les Illes Balears, the Conselleria d'Educació Investigació Cultura i Esport de la Generalitat Valenciana, the National Science Centre of Poland, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the Russian Science Foundation, the European Commission, the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), the Royal Society, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), the Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO), the Paris Île-de-France Region, the National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (NKFIH), the National Research Foundation of Korea, Industry Canada and the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations, and Communications, the International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR), the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Leverhulme Trust, the Research Corporation, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan, and the Kavli Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, STFC, MPS, INFN, CNRS, and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for provision of computational resources. This article has been assigned the document number LIGO-P1800255.

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