Of Harbingers and Higher Modes: Improved gravitational-wave early-warning of compact binary mergers

Abstract

A crucial component to maximizing the science gain from the multi-messenger follow-up of gravitational-wave (GW) signals from compact binary mergers is the prompt discovery of the electromagnetic counterpart. Ideally, the GW detection and localization must be reported early enough to allow for telescopes to slew to the location of the GW-event before the onset of the counterpart. However, the time available for early warning is limited by the short duration spent by the dominant ($\ell =m=2$) mode within the detector's frequency band. Nevertheless, we show that, including higher modes - which enter the detector's sensitivity band well before the dominant mode - in GW searches, can enable us to significantly improve the early warning ability for compact binaries with asymmetric masses (such as neutron-star-black-hole binaries). We investigate the reduction in the localization sky-area when the $\ell =m=3$ and $\ell =m=4$ modes are included in addition to the dominant mode, considering typical slew-times of electromagnetic telescopes ($30-60$ sec). We find that, in LIGO's projected "O5" ("Voyager") network with five GW detectors, some of the neutron-star-black-hole mergers, located at a distance of $40$ Mpc, can be localized to a few hundred sq. deg. $\sim 45$ sec prior to the merger, corresponding to a reduction-factor of $3-4$ ($5-6$) in sky-area. For a third-generation network, we get gains of up to 1.5 minutes in early warning times for a localization area of $100$ sq. deg., even when the source is placed at $100$ Mpc.

6 pages, 5 figures

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• Pre-merger localization of compact-binary mergers with third generation observatories
• Neutron star-black hole mergers in next generation gravitational-wave observatories
• Rapid pre-merger localization of binary neutron stars in third generation gravitational wave detectors
• Detectability of gravitational higher order modes in the third-generation era
• Eccentricity enables the earliest warning and localization of gravitational waves with ground-based detectors
• Early warning of precessing compact binary merger with third-generation gravitational-wave detectors
• Impact of higher harmonics of gravitational radiation on the population inference of binary black holes
• Early warning of precessing neutron-star black-hole binary mergers with the near-future gravitational-wave detectors
• Improved early-warning estimates of luminosity distance and orbital inclination of compact binary mergers using higher modes of gravitational radiation
• Fast and accurate parameter estimation of high-redshift sources with the Einstein Telescope
• Sky localization of gravitational waves from eccentric binaries
• Early Warning From Eccentric Compact Binaries: Template Initialization And Sub-dominant Mode Effects