- Accepted Paper
Impact of the Einstein Telescope’s duty cycle on the estimation of binary black hole parameters
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 11 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/1zg7-sd8v
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 11 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/1zg7-sd8v
The geometry of the Einstein Telescope, the proposed next-generation European gravitational-wave observatory, is yet to be finalized. Two competing designs are under consideration: a nested triangular configuration (ET-) and two separated L-shaped detectors (ET-2L). Extensive prior comparisons of ET designs established the scientific landscape using the Fisher-information-matrix formalism and identified that duty-cycle-induced single-detector operation is precisely the regime where this approximation becomes less reliable, underscoring the need for a , principled treatment of the duty cycle. In this manuscript, we build on that foundation by revisiting the comparison with full Bayesian parameter estimation of gravitational-wave signals from binary black-hole mergers, projected onto a simulated Einstein Telescope that incorporates a duty cycle modelled via continuous-time Markov chains and testing different detector maintenance strategies. We find that the redundancy inherent in the ET- design enables it to maintain at least two operational for the majority of the observing time, whereas the ET-2L configuration is often limited to a single . Crucially, we show that the increased multi-detector uptime translates into tighter constraints on the luminosity distance and source-frame component masses. Notably, this remains true even when gravitational-wave events have a lower signal-to-noise ratio in ET- than in ET-2L.
If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.