All-sky search for continuous gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars using Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo O3 data

Abstract

We present results of an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves which can be produced by spinning neutron stars with an asymmetry around their rotation axis, using data from the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Four different analysis methods are used to search in a gravitational-wave frequency band from 10 to 2048 Hz and a first frequency derivative from −10 −8 to 10 −9 Hz/s. No statistically-significant periodic gravitational-wave signal is observed by any of the four searches. As a result, upper limits on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude h0 are calculated. The best upper limits are obtained in the frequency range of 100 to 200 Hz and they are ∼1.1 × 10 −25 at 95% confidence-level. The minimum upper limit of 1.10 × 10 −25 is achieved at a frequency 111.5 Hz. We also place constraints on the rates and abundances of nearby planetary-and asteroid-mass primordial black holes that could give rise to continuous gravitationalwave signals.

Probing the pulsar explanation of the Galactic-Center GeV excess using continuous gravitational-wave searches

“…A search for quasi-monochromatic gravitational-wave signals originating from anywhere in the sky, including the Galactic Center, was performed using data from the third observing run of advanced LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA data [37]. One algorithm, the Frequency-Hough [38], tracks linear frequency evolution over time by mapping points in the time-frequency plane of the detector to lines in the frequency/frequency derivative plane of the source [38,60].…”

“…We would like to thank all of the essential workers who put their health at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic, without whom we would not have been able to complete this work. We provide here the Frequency-Hough all-sky upper limits on ellipticity from [37], in Fig. 7, averaged over sky location.…”

“…Furthermore, in order to calculate the conversation factor needed to "specialize" the sky-averaged limits to the pixels surrounding the Galactic Center, we start with the following (abridged) formula used in [37] that relates the geometric factor S to how a monochromatic gravitational wave couples to the detector:…”

“…To address the Galactic-Center excess problem using gravitational waves, we will use results from one of the most recent all-sky searches of the latest LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA data, O3, that targeted neutron stars with gravitational-wave frequencies between [10,2048] Hz and spin-downs between [−10 −9 , +10 −8 ] Hz/s [37] with the Frequency-Hough method [38]. We will specifically consider the portion of the sky that contains the Galactic Center.…”

Opportunistic Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Compact Objects in Long-period Binaries

“…No search for continuous gravitational waves so far has produced clear evidence of a signal, including broadband and all-sky surveys (Abbott et al 2019(Abbott et al , 2021a(Abbott et al , 2022aDergachev & Papa 2020Steltner et al 2021).…”