CaltechAUTHORS
Published March 10, 2008 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Host galaxies catalog used in LIGO searches for compact binary coalescence events

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Louisiana State University
  • 2. ROR icon Pennsylvania State University
  • 3. ROR icon Northwestern University
  • 4. ROR icon University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
  • 5. ROR icon Cardiff University
  • 6. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

An up-to-date catalog of nearby galaxies considered to be hosts of binary compact objects is provided, with complete information about sky position, distance, extinction-corrected blue luminosity, and error estimates. With our current understanding of binary evolution, rates of formation and coalescence for binary compact objects scale with massive-star formation, and hence the (extinction-corrected) blue luminosity of host galaxies. Coalescence events in binary compact objects are among the most promising gravitational-wave sources for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors such as LIGO. Our catalog and associated error estimates are important for the interpretation of analyses carried out for LIGO, in constraining the rates of compact binary coalescence, given an astrophysical population model for the sources considered. We discuss how the notion of effective distance, created to account for the antenna pattern of a gravitational-wave detector, must be used in conjunction with our catalog. We also note that the catalog provided can be used in other astronomical analysis of populations that scale with galaxy blue luminosity.

Additional Information

© 2008 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2007 June 7; accepted 2007 November 21. We would like to thank B. Tully for generously providing his most up-to-date nearby galaxies catalog in the preparation of this work. We acknowledge the use of the Hyper Leda database (http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr). We also thank P. Nutzman and the members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Compact Binary Coalescence group for many insightful discussions. This work has been supported in part by NSF grants PHY-0200852, PHY-0353111, PHY 03-26281, PHY 06-00953, PHY 06-53462, PHY-0355289, AST-0407070, a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering (V. K.), a Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation (P. R. B.), the Royal Society (S. F.), and the Center for Computation and Technology (R. K. K.). This work was also supported by the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics, which is supported by the National Science Foundation under cooperative agreement PHY 01-14375. 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 PHY-0107417. This paper has LIGO document number LIGO-P070065-00-Z.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
14179
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20090507-110758856

Funding

NSF
PHY-0200852
NSF
PHY-0353111
NSF
PHY 03-26281
NSF
PHY 06-00953
NSF
PHY 06-53462
NSF
PHY-0355289
NSF
AST-0407070
David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Cottrell Scholar of Research Corporation
Royal Society
Center for Computation and Technology
Center for Gravitational Wave Physics
NSF
PHY 01-14375
NSF
PHY-0107417

Dates

Created
2009-05-11
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-03-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
LIGO