Rapid pre-merger localization of binary neutron stars in third generation gravitational wave detectors

Understand

Pre-merger localization of binary neutron stars (BNSs) is one of the most important scientific goals for the third generation (3G) gravitational wave (GW) detectors.

• It will enable the electromagnetic observation of the whole process of BNS coalescence, especially for the pre-merger and merger phases which have not been observed yet, opening a window for deeper understandings of compact objects.
• To reach this goal, we describe a novel combination of multi-band matched filtering and semi-analytical localization algorithms to achieve early-warning localization of long BNS signals in 3G detectors.
• Using our method we are able to efficiently simulate one month of observations with a three-detector 3G network, and show that it is possible to provide accurate sky localizations more than 30 minutes before the merger.