papers

Publications (58)

astro-ph.HE2021

Predicting electromagnetic counterparts using low-latency, gravitational-wave data products

Cosmin Stachie, Michael W. Coughlin, Tim Dietrich +8

Searches for gravitational-wave counterparts have been going in earnest since GW170817 and the discovery of AT2017gfo. Since then, the lack of detection of other optical counterpar…

astro-ph.HE2014

Localization of short duration gravitational-wave transients with the early advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors

Reed Essick, Salvatore Vitale, Erik Katsavounidis +2

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo, advanced ground-based gravitational-wave detectors, will begin collecting science data in 2015. With first…

astro-ph.HE2022

Bridging the Gap: Categorizing Gravitational-Wave Events at the Transition Between Neutron Stars and Black Holes

Amanda M. Farah, Maya Fishbach, Reed Essick +2

We search for features in the mass distribution of detected compact binary coalescences which signify the transition between neutron stars and black holes. We analyze all gravitati…

gr-qc2025

Compact Binary Coalescence Sensitivity Estimates with Injection Campaigns during the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaborations' Fourth Observing Run

Reed Essick, Michael W. Coughlin, Michael Zevin +21

We describe the effort to characterize gravitational-wave searches and detector sensitivity to different types of compact binary coalescences during the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaborat…

astro-ph.IM2020

iDQ: Statistical Inference of Non-Gaussian Noise with Auxiliary Degrees of Freedom in Gravitational-Wave Detectors

Reed Essick, Patrick Godwin, Chad Hanna +2

Gravitational-wave detectors are exquisitely sensitive instruments and routinely enable ground-breaking observations of novel astronomical phenomena. However, they also witness non…

nucl-th2025

Nonparametric extensions of nuclear equations of state: probing the breakdown scale of relativistic mean-field theory

Isaac Legred, Liam Brodie, Alexander Haber +2

Phenomenological calculations of the properties of dense matter, such as relativistic mean-field theories, represent a pathway to predicting the microscopic and macroscopic propert…

astro-ph.IM2019

Calibrating gravitational-wave detectors with GW170817

Reed Essick, Daniel E. Holz

The waveform of a compact binary coalescence is predicted by general relativity. It is therefore possible to directly constrain the response of a gravitational-wave (GW) detector b…

astro-ph.HE2020

Direct Astrophysical Tests of Chiral Effective Field Theory at Supranuclear Densities

Reed Essick, Ingo Tews, Philippe Landry +2

Recent observations of neutron stars with gravitational waves and X-ray timing provide unprecedented access to the equation of state (EoS) of cold dense matter at densities difficu…

astro-ph.IM2013

Optimizing Vetoes for Gravitational-wave Transient Searches

Reed Essick, Lindy Blackburn, Erik Katsavounidis

Interferometric gravitational-wave detectors like LIGO, GEO600 and Virgo record a surplus of information above and beyond possible gravitational-wave events. These auxiliary channe…

astro-ph.HE2025

A neural network emulator of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo selection function

Thomas A. Callister, Reed Essick, Daniel E. Holz

Characterization of search selection effects comprises a core element of gravitational-wave data analysis. Knowledge of selection effects is needed to predict observational prospec…

gr-qc2020

Incorporation of Statistical Data Quality Information into the GstLAL Search Analysis

Patrick Godwin, Reed Essick, Chad Hanna +20

We present updates to GstLAL, a matched filter gravitational-wave search pipeline, in Advanced LIGO and Virgo's third observing run. We discuss the incorporation of statistical dat…

astro-ph.HE2024

Low-latency gravitational wave alert products and their performance at the time of the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run

Sushant Sharma Chaudhary, Andrew Toivonen, Gaurav Waratkar +50

Multi-messenger searches for BNS and NSBH mergers are currently one of the most exciting areas of astronomy. The search for joint electromagnetic and neutrino counterparts to GWs h…

astro-ph.IM2026

Semianalytic Sensitivity Estimates for Out-of-Bank Gravitational-Wave Signals

Aditya Vijaykumar, Reed Essick

Estimating the sensitivity of gravitational-wave searches is important for a wide variety of scientific applications spanning astrophysics and fundamental physics. In this work, we…

astro-ph.IM2022

Precision Requirements for Monte Carlo Sums within Hierarchical Bayesian Inference

Reed Essick, Will Farr

Hierarchical Bayesian inference is often conducted with estimates of the target distribution derived from Monte Carlo sums over samples from separate analyses of parts of the hiera…

astro-ph.HE2020

Enhancing Gravitational-Wave Science with Machine Learning

Elena Cuoco, Jade Powell, Marco Cavaglià +23

Machine learning has emerged as a popular and powerful approach for solving problems in astrophysics. We review applications of machine learning techniques for the analysis of grou…

astro-ph.EP2016

Orbital decay of hot Jupiters due to nonlinear tidal dissipation within solar-type hosts

Reed Essick, Nevin N. Weinberg

We study the orbital evolution of hot Jupiters due to the excitation and damping of tidally driven -modes within solar-type host stars. Linearly resonant -modes (the dynamica…

astro-ph.HE2019

Counting on Short Gamma-Ray Bursts: Gravitational-Wave Constraints of Jet Geometry

Amanda Farah, Reed Essick, Zoheyr Doctor +2

The detection of GW170817 in gravitational waves and gamma rays revealed that short gamma-ray bursts are associated with the merger of neutron-stars. Gamma rays are thought to resu…

astro-ph.HE2021

Probing Extremal Gravitational-Wave Events with Coarse-Grained Likelihoods

Reed Essick, Amanda Farah, Shanika Galaudage +4

As catalogs of gravitational-wave transients grow, new records are set for the most extreme systems observed to date. The most massive observed black holes probe the physics of pai…

astro-ph.HE2020

Nonparametric constraints on neutron star matter with existing and upcoming gravitational wave and pulsar observations

Philippe Landry, Reed Essick, Katerina Chatziioannou

Observations of neutron stars, whether in binaries or in isolation, provide information about the internal structure of the most extreme material objects in the Universe. In this w…

astro-ph.HE2016

Impact of the tidal p-g instability on the gravitational wave signal from coalescing binary neutron stars

Reed Essick, Salvatore Vitale, Nevin N. Weinberg

Recent studies suggest that coalescing neutron stars are subject to a fluid instability involving the nonlinear coupling of the tide to -modes and -modes. Its influence on th…

gr-qc2023

DAGnabbit! Ensuring Consistency between Noise and Detection in Hierarchical Bayesian Inference

Reed Essick, Maya Fishbach

Hierarchical Bayesian inference can simultaneously account for both measurement uncertainty and selection effects within astronomical catalogs. In particular, the hierarchy imposed…

astro-ph.IM2022

Calibration Uncertainty's Impact on Gravitational-Wave Observations

Reed Essick

Our ability to calibrate current kilometer-scale interferometers can potentially confound the inference of astrophysical signals. Current calibration uncertainties are well describ…

nucl-th2024

Theoretical and Experimental Constraints for the Equation of State of Dense and Hot Matter

Rajesh Kumar, Veronica Dexheimer, Johannes Jahan +57

This review aims at providing an extensive discussion of modern constraints relevant for dense and hot strongly interacting matter. It includes theoretical first-principle results…

astro-ph.HE2017

Parameter estimation for gravitational-wave bursts with the BayesWave pipeline

Bence Bécsy, Peter Raffai, Neil J. Cornish +6

We provide a comprehensive multi-aspect study on the performance of a pipeline used by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration for estimating parameters of gravitational-wave bursts. We add s…

astro-ph.HE2016

Observational Selection Effects with Ground-based Gravitational Wave Detectors

Hsin-Yu Chen, Reed Essick, Salvatore Vitale +2

Ground-based interferometers are not perfectly all-sky instruments, and it is important to account for their behavior when considering the distribution of detected events. In parti…

astro-ph.HE2019

Nonparametric Inference of Neutron Star Composition, Equation of State, and Maximum Mass with GW170817

Reed Essick, Philippe Landry, Daniel E. Holz

The detection of GW170817 in gravitational waves provides unprecedented constraints on the equation of state (EOS) of the ultra-dense matter within the cores of neutron stars (NSs)…

astro-ph.EP2017

Tidal Dissipation in WASP-12

Nevin N. Weinberg, Meng Sun, Phil Arras +1

WASP-12 is a hot Jupiter system with an orbital period of , making it one of the shortest-period giant planets known. Recent transit timing observations by Mac…

astro-ph.HE2022

Implicit correlations within phenomenological parametric models of the neutron star equation of state

Isaac Legred, Katerina Chatziioannou, Reed Essick +1

The rapid increase in the number and precision of astrophysical probes of neutron stars in recent years allows for the inference of their equation of state. Observations target dif…

astro-ph.IM2013

Application of machine learning algorithms to the study of noise artifacts in gravitational-wave data

Rahul Biswas, Lindy Blackburn, Junwei Cao +13

The sensitivity of searches for astrophysical transients in data from the LIGO is generally limited by the presence of transient, non-Gaussian noise artifacts, which occur at a hig…

astro-ph.IM2026

What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You: Self-Consistent Hierarchical Inference with Unknown Follow-up Selection Strategies

Reed Essick, Amanda M. Farah

Many astronomical surveys prompt follow-up observations, but the decision process through which candidates are selected for follow-up can be difficult to model. This poses a challe…

astro-ph.HE2020

Does Matter Matter? Using the mass distribution to distinguish neutron stars and black holes

Maya Fishbach, Reed Essick, Daniel E. Holz

Gravitational-wave detectors have opened a new window through which we can observe black holes (BHs) and neutron stars (NSs). Analyzing the 11 detections from LIGO/Virgo's first gr…

astro-ph.HE2018

A Comparison of p-g Tidal Coupling Analyses

Reed Essick, Nevin N. Weinberg

Two recent studies have attempted to constrain the proposed - tidal instability with gravitational-wave data from GW170817. The studies use Bayesian methods to compare a mode…

astro-ph.HE2020

Discriminating between Neutron Stars and Black Holes with Imperfect Knowledge of the Maximum Neutron Star Mass

Reed Essick, Philippe Landry

Although gravitational-wave signals from exceptional low-mass compact binary coalescences, like GW170817, may carry matter signatures that differentiate the source from a binary bl…

gr-qc2023

Performance of the low-latency GstLAL inspiral search towards LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA's fourth observing run

Becca Ewing, Rachael Huxford, Divya Singh +40

GstLAL is a stream-based matched-filtering search pipeline aiming at the prompt discovery of gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences such as the mergers of black holes…

gr-qc2018

Non-parametric inference of the neutron star equation of state from gravitational wave observations

Philippe Landry, Reed Essick

We develop a non-parametric method for inferring the universal neutron star (NS) equation of state (EOS) from gravitational wave (GW) observations. Many different possible realizat…

astro-ph.HE2024

Striking a Chord with Spectral Sirens: multiple features in the compact binary population correlate with

Utkarsh Mali, Reed Essick

Spectral siren measurements of the Hubble constant () rely on correlations between observed detector-frame masses and luminosity distances. Features in the source-frame mass d…

gr-qc2024

When to Sweat the Small Stuff: identifying the most informative events from ground-based gravitational-wave detectors

Reed Essick, Daniel E. Holz

We explore scaling relations for the information carried by individual events, and how that information accumulates in catalogs like those from ground-based gravitational-wave dete…

gr-qc2017

An information-theoretic approach to the gravitational-wave burst detection problem

Ryan Lynch, Salvatore Vitale, Reed Essick +2

The observational era of gravitational-wave astronomy began in the Fall of 2015 with the detection of GW150914. One potential type of detectable gravitational wave is short-duratio…

astro-ph.HE2023

Phase Transition Phenomenology with Nonparametric Representations of the Neutron Star Equation of State

Reed Essick, Isaac Legred, Katerina Chatziioannou +2

Astrophysical observations of neutron stars probe the structure of dense nuclear matter and have the potential to reveal phase transitions at high densities. Most recent analyses a…

astro-ph.HE2024

Assessing equation of state-independent relations for neutron stars with nonparametric models

Isaac Legred, Bubakar O. Sy-Garcia, Katerina Chatziioannou +1

Relations between neutron star properties that do not depend on the nuclear equation of state offer insights on neutron star physics and have practical applications in data analysi…

gr-qc2023

QoQ: a Q-transform based test for Gravitational Wave transient events

Siddharth Soni, Ethan Marx, Erik Katsavounidis +6

The observation of transient gravitational waves is hindered by the presence of transient noise, colloquially referred to as glitches. These glitches can often be misidentified as…

astro-ph.HE2022

An Isotropy Measurement with Gravitational Wave Observations

Reed Essick, Will M. Farr, Maya Fishbach +2

We constrain the distribution of merging compact binaries across the celestial sphere using the GWTC-3 catalog from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaborations' (LVK) third observing run.…

nucl-th2021

Astrophysical Constraints on the Symmetry Energy and the Neutron Skin of Pb with Minimal Modeling Assumptions

Reed Essick, Ingo Tews, Philippe Landry +1

The symmetry energy and its density dependence are crucial inputs for many nuclear physics and astrophysics applications, as they determine properties ranging from the neutron-skin…

gr-qc2025

Can LIGO Detect Daylight Savings Time?

Reed Essick

Yes, it can. Catalogs produced by networks of Gravitational-wave interferometers are subject to complicated selection effects, and the gold-standard remains direct measurements of…

astro-ph.HE2024

What to expect: kilonova light curve predictions via equation of state marginalization

Andrew Toivonen, Gargi Mansingh, Holton Griffin +13

Efficient multi-messenger observations of gravitational-wave candidates from compact binary coalescence candidate events rely on data products reported in low-latency by the Intern…

nucl-th2021

A Detailed Examination of Astrophysical Constraints on the Symmetry Energy and the Neutron Skin of Pb with Minimal Modeling Assumptions

Reed Essick, Philippe Landry, Achim Schwenk +1

The symmetry energy and its density dependence are pivotal for many nuclear physics and astrophysics applications, as they determine properties ranging from the neutron-skin thickn…

gr-qc2025

Distinguishing between Black Holes and Neutron Stars within a Population of Weak Tidal Measurements

Michael Müller, Reed Essick

We study the ability of tidal signatures within the inspiral of compact binaries observed through gravitational waves (GWs) to distinguish between neutron stars (NSs) and black hol…

astro-ph.HE2021

Selection Effects in Periodic X-ray Data from Maximizing Detection Statistics

Reed Essick

The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) records data of exceptional quality on the energy-dependent X-ray pulse profile of pulsars. However, in searching for evidenc…

astro-ph.HE2021

Impact of the PSR J0740+6620 radius constraint on the properties of high-density matter

Isaac Legred, Katerina Chatziioannou, Reed Essick +2

X-ray pulse profile modeling of PSR J0740+6620, the most massive known pulsar, with data from the NICER and XMM-Newton observatories recently led to a measurement of its radius. We…

astro-ph.HE2021

When are LIGO/Virgo's Big Black-Hole Mergers?

Maya Fishbach, Zoheyr Doctor, Thomas Callister +6

We study the evolution of the binary black hole (BBH) mass distribution across cosmic time. The second gravitational-wave transient catalog (GWTC-2) from LIGO/Virgo contains BBH ev…

nucl-th2025

Unified nonparametric equation-of-state inference from the neutron-star crust to perturbative-QCD densities

Eliot Finch, Isaac Legred, Katerina Chatziioannou +3

Perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD), while valid only at densities exceeding those found in the cores of neutron stars, could provide constraints on the dense-matter equatio…

astro-ph.HE2026

Guesswork in the gap: the impact of uncertainty in the compact binary population on source classification

Utkarsh Mali, Reed Essick

The nature of the compact objects within the supposed "lower mass gap" remains uncertain. Observations of GW190814 and GW230529 highlight the challenges gravitational waves face in…

astro-ph.HE2024

Exotic Stable Branches with Efficient TOV Sequences

Reed Essick

Modern inference schemes for the neutron star equation of state (EoS) require large numbers of stellar models constructed with different EoS, and these stellar models must capture…

gr-qc2016

On similarity of binary black hole gravitational-wave skymaps: to observe or to wait?

Salvatore Vitale, Reed Essick, Erik Katsavounidis +2

Localization estimates for GW150914, the first binary black hole detected by the LIGO instruments, were shared with partner facilities for electromagnetic follow-up. While the sour…

gr-qc2017

Frequency-Dependent Responses in 3rd Generation Gravitational-Wave Detectors

Reed Essick, Salvatore Vitale, Matthew Evans

Interferometric gravitational wave detectors are dynamic instruments. Changing gravitational-wave strains influence the trajectories of null geodesics and therefore modify the inte…

gr-qc2023

Semianalytic Sensitivity Estimates for Catalogs of Gravitational-Wave Transients

Reed Essick

I investigate the sensitivity of gravitational-wave searches by analyzing the response of matched filters in stationary Gaussian noise. In particular, I focus on the ability to ana…

astro-ph.EP2023

Orbital Decay of Hot Jupiters due to Weakly Nonlinear Tidal Dissipation

Nevin N. Weinberg, Niyousha Davachi, Reed Essick +3

We study tidal dissipation in hot Jupiter host stars due to the nonlinear damping of tidally driven -modes, extending the calculations of Essick & Weinberg (2016) to a wide vari…

gr-qc2020

A Coincidence Null Test for Poisson-Distributed Events

Reed Essick, Geoffrey Mo, Erik Katsavounidis

When transient events are observed with multiple sensors, it is often necessary to establish the significance of coincident events. We derive a universal null test for an arbitrary…