Results of the deepest all-sky survey for continuous gravitational waves on LIGO S6 data running on the Einstein@Home volunteer distributed computing project

Authors

B. P. Abbott, California Institute of TechnologyFollow
R. Abbott, California Institute of TechnologyFollow
T. D. Abbott, Louisiana State UniversityFollow
M. R. Abernathy, American UniversityFollow
F. Acernese, Università degli Studi di SalernoFollow
K. Ackley, University of FloridaFollow
C. Adams, LIGO LivingstonFollow
T. Adams, Université Savoie Mont BlancFollow
P. Addesso, Università degli Studi del SannioFollow
R. X. Adhikari, California Institute of TechnologyFollow
V. B. Adya, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)Follow
C. Affeldt, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)Follow
M. Agathos, FOM-Institute of Subatomic Physics - NIKHEFFollow
K. Agatsuma, FOM-Institute of Subatomic Physics - NIKHEFFollow
N. Aggarwal, LIGO, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyFollow
O. D. Aguiar, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas EspaciaisFollow
L. Aiello, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - INFNFollow
A. Ain, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics IndiaFollow
B. Allen, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)Follow
A. Allocca, Università di PisaFollow
P. A. Altin, The Australian National UniversityFollow
S. B. Anderson, California Institute of TechnologyFollow
W. G. Anderson, University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeFollow
K. Arai, California Institute of Technology
M. C. Araya, California Institute of Technology
C. C. Arceneaux, University of Mississippi
J. S. Areeda, California State University, Fullerton
N. Arnaud, Laboratoire de l'Accélérateur Linéaire
K. G. Arun, Chennai Mathematical Institute
S. Ascenzi, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - INFN
G. Ashton, University of Southampton
M. Ast, Universität Hamburg
S. M. Aston, LIGO Livingston

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-18-2016

Abstract

We report results of a deep all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars in data from the S6 LIGO science run. The search was possible thanks to the computing power provided by the volunteers of the Einstein@Home distributed computing project. We find no significant signal candidate and set the most stringent upper limits to date on the amplitude of gravitational wave signals from the target population. At the frequency of best strain sensitivity, between 170.5 and 171 Hz we set a 90% confidence upper limit of 5.5×10-25, while at the high end of our frequency range, around 505 Hz, we achieve upper limits ≃10-24. At 230 Hz we can exclude sources with ellipticities greater than 10-6 within 100 pc of Earth with fiducial value of the principal moment of inertia of 1038 kg m2. If we assume a higher (lower) gravitational wave spin-down we constrain farther (closer) objects to higher (lower) ellipticities.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Physical Review D

Recommended Citation

Abbott, B., Abbott, R., Abbott, T., Abernathy, M., Acernese, F., Ackley, K., Adams, C., Adams, T., Addesso, P., Adhikari, R., Adya, V., Affeldt, C., Agathos, M., Agatsuma, K., Aggarwal, N., Aguiar, O., Aiello, L., Ain, A., Allen, B., Allocca, A., Altin, P., Anderson, S., Anderson, W., Arai, K., Araya, M., Arceneaux, C., Areeda, J., Arnaud, N., Arun, K., Ascenzi, S., Ashton, G., Ast, M., & Aston, S. (2016). Results of the deepest all-sky survey for continuous gravitational waves on LIGO S6 data running on the Einstein@Home volunteer distributed computing project. Physical Review D, 94 (10) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.102002