TY - JOUR

T1 - Deep Einstein@Home All-sky Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves in LIGO O3 Public Data

AU - Steltner, B.

AU - Papa, M. A.

AU - Eggenstein, H. B.

AU - Prix, R.

AU - Bensch, M.

AU - Allen, B.

AU - Machenschalk, B.

N1 - Funding Information: We thank the Einstein@Home volunteers, without the support of whom this search could not have happened. We thank Gianluca Pagliaro for useful discussions on the detectability of Galactic neutron stars. We acknowledge the use of Topcat (Taylor ). B.A and M.A.P. acknowledge NSF award grant No. 1816904 for support of the Einstein@Home project. This research has made use of data or software obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center ( gwosc.org ), a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and KAGRA. Funding Information: We thank the Einstein@Home volunteers, without the support of whom this search could not have happened. We thank Gianluca Pagliaro for useful discussions on the detectability of Galactic neutron stars. We acknowledge the use of Topcat (Taylor 2005). B.A and M.A.P. acknowledge NSF award grant No. 1816904 for support of the Einstein@Home project. This research has made use of data or software obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (gwosc.org), a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and KAGRA.

PY - 2023/7/18

Y1 - 2023/7/18

N2 - We present the results of an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in the public LIGO O3 data. The search covers signal frequencies 20.0 Hz ≤ f ≤ 800.0 Hz and a spin-down range down to −2.6 × 10−9 Hz s−1, motivated by detectability studies on synthetic populations of Galactic neutron stars. This search is the most sensitive all-sky search to date in this frequency/spin-down region. The initial search was performed using the first half of the public LIGO O3 data (O3a), utilizing graphical processing units provided in equal parts by the volunteers of the Einstein@Home computing project and by the ATLAS cluster. After a hierarchical follow-up in seven stages, 12 candidates remain. Six are discarded at the eighth stage, by using the remaining O3 LIGO data (O3b). The surviving six can be ascribed to continuous-wave fake signals present in the LIGO data for validation purposes. We recover these fake signals with very high accuracy with our last stage search, which coherently combines all O3 data. Based on our results, we set upper limits on the gravitational-wave amplitude h 0 and translate these into upper limits on the neutron star ellipticity and on the r-mode amplitude. The most stringent upper limits are at 203 Hz, with h 0 = 8.1 × 10−26 at the 90% confidence level. Our results exclude isolated neutron stars rotating faster than 5 ms with ellipticities greater than 5 × 10 − 8 d 100 pc within a distance d from Earth and r-mode amplitudes α ≥ 10 − 5 d 100 pc for neutron stars spinning faster than 150 Hz.

AB - We present the results of an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in the public LIGO O3 data. The search covers signal frequencies 20.0 Hz ≤ f ≤ 800.0 Hz and a spin-down range down to −2.6 × 10−9 Hz s−1, motivated by detectability studies on synthetic populations of Galactic neutron stars. This search is the most sensitive all-sky search to date in this frequency/spin-down region. The initial search was performed using the first half of the public LIGO O3 data (O3a), utilizing graphical processing units provided in equal parts by the volunteers of the Einstein@Home computing project and by the ATLAS cluster. After a hierarchical follow-up in seven stages, 12 candidates remain. Six are discarded at the eighth stage, by using the remaining O3 LIGO data (O3b). The surviving six can be ascribed to continuous-wave fake signals present in the LIGO data for validation purposes. We recover these fake signals with very high accuracy with our last stage search, which coherently combines all O3 data. Based on our results, we set upper limits on the gravitational-wave amplitude h 0 and translate these into upper limits on the neutron star ellipticity and on the r-mode amplitude. The most stringent upper limits are at 203 Hz, with h 0 = 8.1 × 10−26 at the 90% confidence level. Our results exclude isolated neutron stars rotating faster than 5 ms with ellipticities greater than 5 × 10 − 8 d 100 pc within a distance d from Earth and r-mode amplitudes α ≥ 10 − 5 d 100 pc for neutron stars spinning faster than 150 Hz.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85165628193&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.48550/arXiv.2303.04109

DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2303.04109

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85165628193

VL - 952

JO - Astrophysical Journal

JF - Astrophysical Journal

SN - 0004-637X

IS - 1

M1 - 55

ER -