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Title: A guide to LIGO–Virgo detector noise and extraction of transient gravitational-wave signals
Abstract

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration have cataloged eleven confidently detected gravitational-wave events during the first two observing runs of the advanced detector era. All eleven events were consistent with being from well-modeled mergers between compact stellar-mass objects: black holes or neutron stars. The data around the time of each of these events have been made publicly available through the gravitational-wave open science center. The entirety of the gravitational-wave strain data from the first and second observing runs have also now been made publicly available. There is considerable interest among the broad scientific community in understanding the data and methods used in the analyses. In this paper, we provide an overview of the detector noise properties and the data analysis techniques used to detect gravitational-wave signals and infer the source properties. We describe some of the checks that are performed to validate the analyses and results from the observations of gravitational-wave events. We also address concerns that have been raised about various properties of LIGO–Virgo detector noise and the correctness of our analyses as applied to the resulting data.

 
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Award ID(s):
1921006 1806885 1707965 1806824 1806165 1912632 1726215 1912648 1607709 1708081 1806990 1707835 1912649 1836779 1716394 1708146 1806461 1653374 1912630 1700765 1710286 1807046 1912604 1806577
NSF-PAR ID:
10360378
Author(s) / Creator(s):
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Publisher / Repository:
IOP Publishing
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Classical and Quantum Gravity
Volume:
37
Issue:
5
ISSN:
0264-9381
Page Range / eLocation ID:
Article No. 055002
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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