[nonbel]

Thanks,

This is information that should be included in the papers because the current description is too terse. Basically you are saying that the filters used for online analysis have nothing to do with the background model, zero influence on what periods get included, etc. I'm still unclear on what exactly needed to be "restarted by hand" for the original GW150914 signal, but ok.

>"In the case of binary black holes, the expectation is that there will be no electromagnetic counterpart, as the region is expected to be cleared of matter well before we observed the black holes merging."

Is there any other type of event that is expected to be accompanied by some kind of corroborating evidence?

[ahnitz]

To get an electromagnetic counterpart, you need matter to be in the system. It may be possible for binary neutron star and some neutron-star black hole mergers. These types of mergers are one of the predicted sources of short gamma ray bursts, so if we get reasonably lucky it may be possible to find one in coincidence. Gamma ray burst are beamed, however, so to detect it, it would have to be point towards the earth, and many of the gamma bursts that we have accurate distance measurements for are currently outside our sensitivity range. We only have estimates for a fraction of GRBs though. Lower energy EM radiation may be possible to see as well with these mergers.