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Free keywords:
Astrophysics, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, astro-ph.IM, Astrophysics, High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, astro-ph.HE,General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
This paper studies general properties of networks of interferometric
gravitational wave detectors in the context of existing detectors (LIGO and
VIRGO) and planned and proposed detectors in Japan (LCGT), Australia, and
India...I show that the polarization-averaged sensitivity of a network of
identical detectors to any class of sources can be characterized by two numbers
-- the {\em visibility distance} of the expected source from a single detector
and the minimum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for a confident detection -- and by
one function, the antenna pattern of the network. I derive two universal
probability distribution functions: for the values of SNR of detected events,
and ... for the values of the inclination angle of detected binary systems. The
first pdf implies that the most likely value of SNR for the first detected
event will be about 1.26 times the threshold SNR of the search. The second
implies that, if binary coalescence events are accompanied by narrow-beamed
gamma-ray jets, the number of gamma bursts associated with detected coalescence
events will be 3.4 times larger than one would expect if there were no
correlation between the jet direction and the angular momentum axis of the
binary system. ...I propose three figures of merit that characterize the
relative performance of different networks...I compare various likely and
possible networks, based on these figures of merit. Moving one of the LIGO
detectors to Australia (which is under discussion as this paper is being
written) improves direction-finding by a factor of 4 or more...Including both
LCGT and LIGO-Australia, the network has position error ellipses a factor of 6
smaller in area and a detection capability nearly twice that of the original
LIGO-VIRGO network...Using coherent analysis, the enlarged advanced networks
can look forward to detecting three to four hundred neutron star binary
coalescences per year.
