Inspiral group charter [DRAFT]
Since the LSC and Virgo have joined forces on data analysis activities, these pages are now frozen. Ongoing searches for gravitational waves from compact binary systems are performed under the Compact Binary Coalescence group. Please look at that web site for more information about the group, mail lists, and cvs access and other resources.
Boldface text is in draft form for discussion by the Inspiral Analysis Group. We (Gaby and Patrick) solicit comments/suggestions on this document by e-mail to the iulgroup@gravity.phys.uwm.edu as soon as possible with the goal of agreeing on a charter at the 11 April 2006 telecon.
This document is the charter of the Inspiral Analysis Group of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration as required by Sec 8.1 of the LSC Bylaws.
The Inspiral Analysis Group is a working group of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration which is open to all LSC members who are interested. It holds regular and frequent membership meetings, both by telecon and in person.
The Inspiral Analysis Group has two co-chairs (an instrument scientist and a data analyst) as provided in Sec. 8.3 of the LSC Bylaws. The group will vote by simple majority, before candidates are chosen, if they wish to have elected chairs or have chairs appointed by the Spokesperson as provided in Sec. 7.8.5.1 of the LSC Bylaws. If an election is chosen, the election will be carried out according to Sec 7.8.5 of the LSC Bylaws. The co-chairs will be members of the Analysis Committee as provided in Sec. 8.4 of the LSC Bylaws.
The inspiral and merger of a compact binary system generates gravitational waves which sweep upward in frequency and amplitude through the sensitive band of the Earth-based detectors. The detection of gravitational waves from these astrophysical sources will provide a great deal of information about strong field gravity, dense matter, and the populations of neutron stars and black holes in the Universe. The Inspiral Analysis Group works to identify gravitational-wave signals from compact binary sources in the detector data, estimate the waveform parameters with confidence in the correctness and validity of the results, and use these results to explore the astronomy and astrophysics of these sources.
The Inspiral Analysis Group will prepare an annual report of progress and plans. The plans will form part of the Analysis Group White Paper, the report part of the Spokesperson annual report as provided by Sec. 8.5 of the LSC Bylaws. The Inspiral Analysis Group will keep a living report, namely a list of ongoing activities on the group web site, and have the members add a line to the relevant task whenever a significant milestone is completed. For example, searches would have lines when there are news on playground results, final results, paper draft, paper published for searches,... This would then be used for the annual report.
As provided in Sec. 8.6 of the LSC Bylaws, decisions of the Inspiral Analysis Group on scientific issues will be by consensus. Votes by simple majority may be used for organizational or other non-scientific decisions.