All-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the full S5 LIGO data
We report on an all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency band 50-800 Hz and with the frequency time derivative in the range of 0 through -6×10[superscript -9] Hz/s. Such a signal could be produced by a nearby spinning and slightly nonaxisymmetric isolated neutron star in our...
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Other Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
American Physical Society,
2012-05-11T22:04:27Z.
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | Get fulltext |
Summary: | We report on an all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency band 50-800 Hz and with the frequency time derivative in the range of 0 through -6×10[superscript -9] Hz/s. Such a signal could be produced by a nearby spinning and slightly nonaxisymmetric isolated neutron star in our Galaxy. After recent improvements in the search program that yielded a 10× increase in computational efficiency, we have searched in two years of data collected during LIGO's fifth science run and have obtained the most sensitive all-sky upper limits on gravitational-wave strain to date. Near 150 Hz our upper limit on worst-case linearly polarized strain amplitude h[subscript 0] is 1×10[superscript -24], while at the high end of our frequency range we achieve a worst-case upper limit of 3.8×10[superscript -24] for all polarizations and sky locations. These results constitute a factor of 2 improvement upon previously published data. A new detection pipeline utilizing a loosely coherent algorithm was able to follow up weaker outliers, increasing the volume of space where signals can be detected by a factor of 10, but has not revealed any gravitational-wave signals. The pipeline has been tested for robustness with respect to deviations from the model of an isolated neutron star, such as caused by a low-mass or long-period binary companion. United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Carnegie Trust Leverhulme Trust David & Lucile Packard Foundation Research Corporation Alfred P. Sloan Foundation |
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