LIGO-Virgo searches for gravitational waves from coalescing binaries: A status update

Abstract

Coalescing compact binaries of neutron stars and/or black holes are considered as one of the most promising sources for Earth based gravitational wave detectors. The LIGO-Virgo joint collaboration's Compact Binary Coalescence (CBC) group is searching for gravitational waves emitted by these astrophysical systems by matched filtering the data against theoretically modeled template waveforms. A variety of waveform template families are employed depending on the mass range probed by the search and the stage of the inspiral phase targeted: restricted post-Newtonian for systems having total mass less than 35M, numerical relativity inspired complete inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms for more massive systems up to 100M and ringdown templates for modeling perturbed black holes up to 500M. We give a status update on CBC group's current efforts and upcoming plans in detecting signatures of astrophysical gravitational waves. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.