Geometrical expression for the angular resolution of a network of gravitational-wave detectors

Creators: Wen, Linqing; Chen, Yanbei

Abstract

We report for the first time general geometrical expressions for the angular resolution of an arbitrary network of interferometric gravitational-wave (GW) detectors when the arrival time of a GW is unknown. We show explicitly elements that decide the angular resolution of a GW detector network. In particular, we show the dependence of the angular resolution on areas formed by projections of pairs of detectors and how they are weighted by sensitivities of individual detectors. Numerical simulations are used to demonstrate the capabilities of the current GW detector network. We confirm that the angular resolution is poor along the plane formed by current LIGO-Virgo detectors. A factor of a few to more than ten fold improvement of the angular resolution can be achieved if the proposed new GW detectors LCGT or AIGO are added to the network. We also discuss the implications of our results for the design of a GW detector network, optimal localization methods for a given network, and electromagnetic follow-up observations.

Additional Information

© 2010 American Physical Society. Received 3 April 2007; revised 1 February 2010; published 8 April 2010. We are grateful to Emanuele Berti, Cole Miller, Antony Searle, Stephen Fairhurst, Reinhard Prix, Ray Frey, David Blair, Sterl Phinney, Andrzej Krolak for useful comments of this work. This work is in part supported by NSF grant PHY-0653653, the David and Barbara Groce start-up fund at Caltech, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Sofja Kovalevskaja Programme, and by the Australian Research Council.

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