Catalog of Observed Gravitational-wave Mergers

Information about the growing catalog of gravitational-wave mergers can be accessed through the pycbc.catalog package.

Which mergers do we have information about?

import pycbc.catalog

c = pycbc.catalog.Catalog()

# Names of mergers in the catalog
print(c.names)

# Approximate GPS time of the mergers
print([c[m].time for m in c])

$ python ../examples/catalog/what.py
[u'GW151012', u'GW170608', u'GW170729', u'GW150914', u'GW151226', u'GW170814', u'GW170817', u'GW170104', u'GW170809', u'GW170818', u'GW170823']
[1128678900.4, 1180922494.5, 1185389807.3, 1126259462.4, 1135136350.6, 1186741861.5, 1187008882.4, 1167559936.6, 1186302519.8, 1187058327.1, 1187529256.5]

Plotting some key statistics from the catalog

import pycbc.catalog, pylab

c = pycbc.catalog.Catalog()
mchirp, elow, ehigh = c.median1d('mchirp', return_errors=True)
spin = c.median1d('chi_eff')

pylab.errorbar(mchirp, spin, xerr=[-elow, ehigh], fmt='o', markersize=7)
pylab.xlabel('Chirp Mass')
pylab.xscale('log')
pylab.ylabel('Effective Spin')
pylab.show()

(Source code, png, hires.png, pdf)

_images/stat.png

Accessing data around each event

Data around each event can also be easily accessed for any detector.

import pycbc.catalog, pylab

m = pycbc.catalog.Merger("GW170817")

fig, axs = pylab.subplots(2, 1, sharex=True, sharey=True)
for ifo, ax in zip(["L1", "H1"], axs):
    pylab.sca(ax)
    pylab.title(ifo)
    # Retreive data around the BNS merger
    ts = m.strain(ifo).time_slice(m.time - 15, m.time + 6)

    # Whiten the data with a 4s filter
    white = ts.whiten(4, 4)

    times, freqs, power = white.qtransform(.01, logfsteps=200,
                                        qrange=(110, 110),
                                        frange=(20, 512))
    pylab.pcolormesh(times, freqs, power**0.5, vmax=5)

pylab.yscale('log')
pylab.ylabel("Frequency (Hz)")
pylab.xlabel("Time (s)")
pylab.show()

(Source code, png, hires.png, pdf)

_images/data.png