Parameter estimation with gravitational waves

Understand

The new era of gravitational wave astronomy truly began on September 14, 2015 with the detection of GW150914, the sensational first direct observation of gravitational waves from the inspiral and merger of two black holes by the two Advanced LIGO detectors.

• In the subsequent first three observing runs of the LIGO/Virgo network, gravitational waves from $\sim 50$ compact binary mergers have been announced, with more results to come.
• The events have mostly been produced by binary black holes, but two binary neutron star mergers have so far been observed, as well as the mergers of two neutron star - black hole systems.
• Furthermore, gravitational waves emitted by core-collapse supernovae, pulsars and the stochastic gravitational wave background are within the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA sensitivity band and are likely to be observed in future observation runs.