Host Galaxies Catalog Used in LIGO Searches for Compact Binary Coalescence Events

Abstract

An up-to-date catalog of nearby galaxies considered as 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, to constrain 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 note that the catalog provided can be used on other astronomical analysis of populations that scale with galaxy blue luminosity.

29 pages, 7 figures, Accepted to Astrophysical Journal. To appear in March 20 2008 Astrophysical Journal

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• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: The luminosity functions of bulges and discs and their implied stellar mass densities
• Dynamical Interactions and the Black Hole Merger Rate of the Universe
• Interpreting the results of searches for gravitational waves from coalescing binaries

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• Search of S3 LIGO data for gravitational wave signals from spinning black hole and neutron star binary inspirals
• LOOC UP: Locating and observing optical counterparts to gravitational wave bursts
• Search for gravitational wave ringdowns from perturbed black holes in LIGO S4 data
• Template banks to search for compact binaries with spinning components in gravitational wave data
• Interpreting the results of searches for gravitational waves from coalescing binaries
• On Gravitational Motions
• Einsteinian Manifolds and Gravitational Waves
• Matters of Gravity, The Newsletter of the Topical Group in Gravitation of the American Physical Society, Volume 32, Fall 2008