LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Cumulative Detection plot - O1-O4c

Document #:

LIGO-G2302098-v46

Document type:

G - Presentations (eg Graphics)

Abstract:

A cumulative detection plot, including significant candidate events from O4a, O4b, and O4c.

Public events are sourced from GraceDB: https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/public/O4/

The latest version of the plots, updated automatically three times a day, is always available on GitLab: https://git.ligo.org/operations/cumulative-event-plot (Access requires LVK user account.)

The plots on this DCC page https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-G2302098 are occasionally synchronized with the latest GitLab version.

From O1 through O4a, the counts refer to the detected gravitational-wave events that are included in the GWTC catalog papers. In contrast, the counts for O4b and O4c refer to candidate events for which a significant low-latency alert was issued and that were not subsequently retracted. Once the corresponding GWTC paper is released, these counts are revised to reflect the officially published detections.

For O4a, the event count is fixed at 128, following GWTC-4.0 (https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082) This total includes one event detected in a five day segment of data from the engineering run preceding O4a, which was analyzed and reported in GWTC-4.0. Consequently, in the figure, these five-days from pre-O4a engineering run are included within O4a, thereby making the O4a period appear five days longer than actual.

The O4c data collection period is divided into two segments: "January 28 April 1, 2025" and "June 11 November 18, 2025". These segments are distinguished in the figure by different fill colors: the first is represented in dark blue, and the second in light blue. The intervening gap is omitted from the figure.

Files in Document:

• Cumulative detections/candidates plot (PNG) (cumulative_events.png, 397.9 kB)

Topics:

• Education, Outreach
• Public relations
• Public Talk / Colloquium

Author Groups:

• LVK

Notes and Changes:

Updated on Nov 18, 2025

Related Documents:

• LIGO-G2102395: LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Cumulative Detection plot