GW Data Plotter: Bringing gravitational waves to your desktop!

Gravitational waves (GW) are ripples in spacetime created when massive objects accelerate during some of the universe’s most violent and energetic events, such as the mergers of two black holes or neutron stars. For more information about the gravitational waves, check this post! Data from these events, carrying information about their astrophysical sources and the nature of gravity itself, are recorded by the detectors operated by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration and released to the public via the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center https://gwosc.org/.

The GW community has developed specialized software tools and data analysis techniques to unlock the information encoded in GW data. As a result, accessing and analyzing GW data can be challenging for newcomers, such as researchers from different fields or students starting in the world of research, due to the steep learning curve involved.

Direct evidence of gravitational radiation may come first from a powerful source such as the merger of two orbiting black holes. The signals from such an event are expected to show an initial oscillation with increasing amplitude and decreasing wavelength as the black holes spiral toward each other *(left)*. When they merge, a chaotic pattern of gravitational waves may be given off *(center)*. Finally, the resultant single black hole is expected to “ring,” creating waves that show one or more characteristic frequencies and diminish with time *(right)*. Source/credits: Tom Dunne, https://www.americanscientist.org/article/gravitational-waves-and-the-effort-to-detect-them

To lower this barrier, Agata Trovato and Panagiotis Iosif, researchers from the Physics Department of the University of Trieste, developed GW Data Plotter, a graphical desktop application that simplifies interaction with GW data. GW Data Plotter enables users to easily download public GW data, visualize them over time, and perform basic analysis tasks commonly used in GW research – all with just a few clicks. The app also allows users to explore the astrophysical parameters of any published GW event, view its localization on the celestial sphere, and analyze parameter distributions of all GW events using histograms and scatter plots. To simplify the installation process and make the app widely accessible, executable files for all major operating systems are provided and can be downloaded from this Zenodo link. The app’s source code is publicly available on GitHub where users are encouraged to share their feedback.

The app developed is part of the European project AHEAD 2020 under Work Package 8: “Access to Gravitational Wave Science Archive and Tools”.