AEI: Gravitational-Wave Detectors Begin Third Observation Run
Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2019 9:38 pm
Gravitational-Wave Detectors Begin Third Observation Run
Albert Einstein Institute | Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics | 2019 Mar 26
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Upgraded Detectors to Resume Hunt for Gravitational Waves
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LIGO Set to Resume the Hunt for Ripples in Space and Time
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Albert Einstein Institute | Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics | 2019 Mar 26
On 1st of April 2019, the twin LIGO instruments, the Virgo detector, and the GEO600 instrument start their third observation run “O3”, which is scheduled to last for one year. The detectors’ sensitivities have been further increased in the past months and previous engineering runs. AEI scientists expect to detect up to dozens of mergers of black holes and further neutron star collisions. LIGO Scientific Collaboration researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute; AEI) in Potsdam and Hannover and at the Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH) are leading partners in the international gravitational-wave community. They have continued to improve the source modeling, follow-up analyses and the detector technology. ...
The estimated rates of binary black hole mergers range from a few events per month to a few events per week. Mergers of neutron stars could be seen as often as once per year and up to once per month. Whether a hitherto undetected merger of a neutron star with a black hole will be observed in O3 is uncertain.
The LIGO detectors transitioned into O3 directly from the 14th engineering run, which began on March 4th. Compared to the best sensitivities reached in O2, their detection horizons for binary neutron star mergers have increased by about 60 Mpc (190 million light-years) to 170 Mpc (550 million light-years) for LIGO, increasing the detection rate by roughly a factor of three to four compared to O2.
O3 will last for an entire year. The Japanese KAGRA detector is expected to join the observation run in late 2019, extending the network by another large detector. ...
LIGO & Virgo Resume Search for Ripples in Space & Time
LIGO | NSF | Caltech | MIT | 2019 Mar 26
Virgo & LIGO Join Forces for New Signal Hunt
Virgo | EGO | 2019 Mar 26
Upgraded Detectors to Resume Hunt for Gravitational Waves
Science & Technology Facilities Council, UK | 2019 Mar 26
LIGO Set to Resume the Hunt for Ripples in Space and Time
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