Guiding interferometer improvements with the frequency-dependent inspiral range

Creators: Davis, Derek¹; Capote, Elenna^{1, 2}

1. California Institute of Technology
2. Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory

Abstract

The inspiral range is the most common metric for characterizing the performance of ground-based gravitational-wave interferometers. However, there is no clear formalism for working with similar quantities that describe the frequency-dependent astrophysical sensitivity of these detectors. We introduce a metric for the cumulative normalized range of a gravitational-wave interferometer, as well as methods to compare two separate noise curves. We show how this metric is a valuable tool for understanding the impact of commissioning of these interferometers and provides increased clarity compared to other commonly used approaches.

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Acknowledgement

We thank Anamaria Effler, Sheila Dwyer, Oli Patane, Gabriele Vajente, Ian MacMillan, and Edgard Bonilla for helpful discussions regarding the use of inspiral range and Jennie Wright for her comments during the internal review of this paper. D. D. and E. C. are supported by the NSF through the LIGO Laboratory. This material is based upon work supported by NSF’s LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation, and operates under Cooperative Agreement No. PHY-2309200. The authors are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Laboratory and supported by National Science Foundation Grants No. PHY-0757058 and No. PHY-0823459.

Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this article are openly available [43].

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