Beyond the Horizon Distance: LIGO-Virgo can Boost Gravitational-Wave Detection Rates by Exploiting the Mass Distribution of Neutron Star and Black Hole Binaries

We explore the advantage of focusing on regions of the parameter space in gravitational-wave searches for the binary mergers of neutron stars and black holes. For neutron star binaries, we show that taking advantage of their narrow observed mass distribution could improve detection rates, in some cases by more than 50%. A reduced template bank can also represent significant improvement in technical cost. We present a detailed search method using binary mass distribution to incorporate information on the mass distribution.