GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run — Parameter estimation data release

This material is part of several data products associated with GWTC-3, the third Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration. For more information, see the paper (dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P2000318/public), the related material linked from this page, and the GWTC-3 data release documentation (www.gw-openscience.org/GWTC-3/).

Parameter estimation data release

This data release contains posterior samples (*.h5) for gravitational-wave candidates from the second part of the third observing run (O3b).We provide results for the 35 candidates that have a probability of astrophysical origin of over 0.5, plus GW200105_162426, which is a clear outlier from the noise background. There are two .h5 files per event

• Cosmologically reweighted (*cosmo.h5)
• Not cosmologically reweighted (*nocosmo.h5)

The cosmologically reweighted posteriors are reweighted to have a luminosity-distance prior that has a uniform merger rate in the source's comoving frame. See the paper appendices for further information. In addition to containing the posterior samples, the .h5 files also contain metadata about the analyses including the configuration files (which specify details such as the detector data analysed), noise power spectral densities (potentially for a superset of the detectors used in the analysis) and calibration uncertainty envelopes.

The inference of the source parameters were performed with Bilby, Parallel Bilby and RIFT. The results are formatted using PESummary.

A similar release has been made to accompany GWTC-2.1 for results from the first part of the third observing run.

Sky localization data release

The skymap tar file (skymaps.tar.gz) contains candidate sky localizations corresponding to different parameter estimation configurations. Two waveforms are used for the majority of targets (IMRPhenomXPHM and SEOBNRv4PHM) and additional waveforms are used for possible neutron star--black hole mergers (see the paper for further information). If you do not mind which waveform, the skymaps labelled "Mixed" include posterior samples from both waveforms used.

Contour data release

The contour tar file (contour_data.tar.gz) contains the contour files used to produce Figures 8 and 9 in the paper.

Python notebook

The Python notebook (O3bPEDataReleaseNotebook.ipynb) explains how to read and use the posterior samples with a selection of examples.

How to download all files from this page

If you would like to download all files on this page, we recommend zenodo_get:

pip install zenodo_get
zenodo-get RECORD_ID_OR_DOI

where the record ID for the most recent version of this page is 5546662 and IDs for other versions can be found in the Versions section at the side of this page.

For more general background on gravitational-wave parameter estimation, try the materials from a GW Open Data Workshop or the guide to LIGO–Virgo data analysis.