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GCN Circular 27977

Subject
LIGO/Virgo MS200614ct: Identification of a test binary black hole candidate
Date
2020-06-18T04:11:20Z (5 years ago)
From
Surabhi Sachdev at LVC <surabhi.sachdev@gmail.com>
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration report:

*** This is a test of the Early Warning alert system resulting from archival
O3 data. Times and sky localizations are fictitious. ***

We identified the compact binary merger candidate MS200614ct during
real-time processing of data from LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1), LIGO
Livingston Observatory (L1), and Virgo Observatory (V1) at 2020-06-14
15:30:50.363 UTC (GPS time: 1276183868.363). The candidate was found
by the MBTAOnline [1], CWB [2], PyCBC Live [3], and GstLAL [4]
analysis pipelines.

MS200614ct is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as
estimated by the online analysis, is 9.1e-09 Hz, or about one in 3
years. The event's properties can be found at this URL:
https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/MS200614ct

The classification of the GW signal, in order of descending
probability, is BBH (97%), Terrestrial (3%), BNS (<1%), NSBH (<1%), or
MassGap (<1%).

Assuming the candidate is astrophysical in origin, the probability
that the lighter compact object has a mass < 3 solar masses (HasNS) is
<1% [6]. Using the masses and spins inferred from the signal, the
probability of matter outside the final compact object (HasRemnant) is
<1% [6].

Two sky maps are available at this time and can be retrieved from the
GraceDB event page:
 * bayestar.fits.gz,0, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [5],
 * bayestar.fits.gz,1, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [5].

The preferred sky map at this time is bayestar.fits.gz,1. For the
bayestar.fits.gz,1 sky map, the 90% credible region is 841 deg2.
Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance
estimate is 1998 +/- 526 Mpc (a posteriori mean +/- standard deviation).

For further information about analysis methodology and the contents of
this alert, refer to the LIGO/Virgo Public Alerts User Guide
<https://emfollow.docs.ligo.org/userguide/>.

 [1] Adams et al. CQG 33, 175012 (2016)
 [2] Klimenko et al. PRD 93, 042004 (2016)
 [3] Nitz et al. PRD 98, 024050 (2018)
 [4] Messick et al. PRD 95, 042001 (2017)
 [5] Singer & Price PRD 93, 024013 (2016)
 [6] Chatterjee et al. The Astrophysical Journal 896, 1 (2020)
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