Localization of transient gravitational wave sources: beyond triangulation

Understand

Rapid, accurate localization of gravitational wave transient events has proved critical to successful electromagnetic followup.

• In previous papers we have shown that localization estimates can be obtained through triangulation based on timing information at the detector sites.
• In practice, detailed parameter estimation routines use additional information and provide better localization than is possible based on timing information alone.
• In this paper, we extend the timing based localization approximation to incorporate consistency of observed signals with two gravitational wave polarizations, and an astrophysically motivated distribution of sources.