THE COSMIC COALESCENCE RATES FOR DOUBLE NEUTRON STAR BINARIES

We report on the newly increased event rates due to the recent discovery of the highly relativistic binary pulsar J07373039. Using a rigorous statistical method, we present the calculations reported by Burgay et al., which produce a coalescence rate for Galactic double neutron star (DNS) systems that is higher by a factor of 6–7 compared to estimates made prior to the new discovery. Our method takes into account known pulsar survey selection effects and biases due to small-number statistics. This rate increase has dramatic implications for gravitational wave detectors. For the initial Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, the most probable detection rates for DNS in-spirals are one event per 5–250 yr; at 95% confidence, we obtain rates up to one per 1.5 yr. For the advanced LIGO detectors, the most probable rates are 20–1000 events per year. These predictions, for the first time, bring the expectations for DNS detections by the initial LIGO detectors to the astrophysically relevant regime. We also use our models to predict that the large-scale Parkes Multibeam pulsar survey with acceleration searches could detect an average of three to four binary pulsars similar to those known at present. Subject headings: binaries: close — gravitational waves — methods: statistical — stars: neutron

[1]  R. Narayan,et al.  The Coalescence Rate of Double Neutron Star Systems , 2000, astro-ph/0012038.

[2]  R. Hulse,et al.  Discovery of a pulsar in a binary system , 1975 .

[3]  D. Lorimer,et al.  Pulsar statistics: the birthrate and initial spin periods of radio pulsars , 1993 .

[4]  C. Kim,et al.  An increased estimate of the merger rate of double neutron stars from observations of a highly relativistic system , 2003, Nature.

[5]  J. Cordes,et al.  Neutron Star Population Dynamics. I. Millisecond Pulsars , 1997, astro-ph/9706162.

[6]  Measurement of Relativistic Orbital Decay in the PSR B1534+12 Binary System , 1997, astro-ph/9712296.

[7]  J. Weisberg,et al.  Further experimental tests of relativistic gravity using the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16 , 1989 .

[8]  A. Wolszczan.  A nearby 37.9-ms radio pulsar in a relativistic binary system , 1991, Nature.

[9]  Joshua R. Smith,et al.  LIGO: the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory , 1992, Science.

[10]  The Probability Distribution of Binary Pulsar Coalescence Rates. I. Double Neutron Star Systems in the Galactic Field , 2002, astro-ph/0207408.

[11]  B. Caron,et al.  The Virgo interferometer for gravitational wave detection , 1997 .

[12]  E. Phinney.  The Rate of Neutron Star Binary Mergers in the Universe: Minimal Predictions for Gravity Wave Detectors , 1991 .

[13]  E. Coccia,et al.  First Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Wave Experiments , 1995 .

[14]  F. Camilo,et al.  The Parkes multi-beam pulsar survey - I. Observing and data analysis systems, discovery and timing of 100 pulsars , 2001, astro-ph/0106522.