# Abbott:2019 — GWTC-1, the first gravitational-wave transient catalogue

**Citation.** B. P. Abbott *et al.* (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo
Collaboration), "GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact
Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second
Observing Runs", *Physical Review X* **9**, 031040 (2019).
[doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.9.031040](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.9.031040)

**Access.** Open access (PRX). Event parameters and strain data are public
through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center, <https://gwosc.org/>.

## What this reference supports in the treatise

The black-hole observation chapter: the population of stellar-mass binary
black holes whose masses, distances and merger rates are the observational
case that black holes exist and merge.

`../data/Abbott_2019.csv` holds the catalogue's published parameters for
every confident O1/O2 event.

## Provenance

- **Fetched from GWOSC's own event API**,
  <https://gwosc.org/eventapi/json/GWTC-1-confident/>, by
  `tools/bibcheck/build_gwosc.py`. Values are the catalogue's published
  medians; `err_plus`/`err_minus` are its 90% credible bounds.
- Masses are **source-frame**. Detector-frame masses are larger by (1+z);
  mixing the two is the standard way to misstate a black-hole mass.

## Caveats

- A blank error means GWOSC leaves it blank for that event, not that the
  quantity is exact.
- GWTC-1 covers O1 and O2 only. Later catalogues (GWTC-2, -3, -4) add many
  more events and supersede the population statements, so a claim about
  "how many mergers have been seen" must name the catalogue it rests on.