Status of the joint LIGO-TAMA300 inspiral analysis

Abstract

We present the status of the joint search for gravitational waves from inspiraling neutron star binaries in the LIGO Science Run 2 and TAMA300 Data Taking Run 8 data, which were taken from 14 February to 14 April 2003, by the LIGO and TAMA Collaborations. In this paper, we discuss what has been learned from an analysis of a subset of the data sample reserved as a 'playground'. We determine the coincidence conditions for parameters such as the coalescence time and chirp mass by injecting simulated Galactic binary neutron star signals into the data stream. We select coincidence conditions so as to maximize our efficiency of detecting simulated signals. We obtain an efficiency for our coincident search of 78% and show that we are missing primarily very distant signals for TAMA300. We perform a time-slide analysis to estimate the background due to accidental coincidence of noise triggers. We find that the background triggers have a very different character from the triggers of simulated signals