First all-sky upper limits from LIGO on the strength of periodic gravitational waves using the Hough transform

Creators: Abbott, B.; Adhikari, Rana X.; Agresti, J.; Anderson, S. B.; Araya, M.; Armandula, H.; Asiri, F.; Barish, B. C.; Barnes, M.; Barton, M. A.; Bhawal, B.; Billingsley, G.; Black, E.; Blackburn, K.; Bork, R.; Brown, D. A.; Buonanno, A.; Busby, D.; Cardenas, L.; Chandler, A.; Chapsky, J.; Charlton, P.; Chatterji, S.; Coyne, D.; Creighton, T. D.; D'Ambrosio, E.; DeSalvo, R.; Ding, H.; Drever, R. W. P.; Dupuis, R. J.; Edlund, J. A.; Ehrens, P.; Etzel, T.; Evans, M.; Farnham, D.; Fine, M.; Gillespie, A.; Goggin, L.; Grimmett, D.; Hartunian, A.; Heefner, J.; Hoang, P.; Hrynevych, M.; Ivanov, A.; Jones, L.; Jungwirth, D.; Kells, W.; King, C.; King, P.; Kozak, D.; Lazzarini, A.; Lei, M.; Libbrecht, K.; Lindquist, P.; Liu, S.; Logan, J.; Lyons, T. T.; Mageswaran, M.; Mailand, K.; Majid, W.; Mandic, V.; Mann, F.; Maros, E.; Mason, J.; Meshkov, S.; Miyakawa, O.; Miyoki, S.; Nash, T.; Nocera, F.; Ouimette, D.; Pan, Y.; Pedraza, M.; Rao, S. R.; Redding, D.; Regehr, M. W.; Reilly, K. T.; Reithmaier, K.; Robison, L.; Romie, J.; Rose, D.; Russell, P.; Salzman, I.; Sanders, G. H.; Sannibale, V.; Schmidt, V.; Sears, B.; Seel, S.; Shawhan, P.; Sievers, L.; Smith, M. R.; Spero, R.; Sumner, M. C.; Sutton, P. J.; Sylvestre, J.; Takamori, A.; Tariq, H.; Taylor, R.; Thorne, K. S.; Tilav, S.; Tinto, M.; Torrie, C.; Tyler, W.; Vass, S.; Vallisneri, M.; Wallace, L.; Ward, R.; Ware, B.; Webber, D.; Whitcomb, S. E.; Willems, P. A.; Williams, R.; Wilson, A.; Yamamoto, H.; Zhang, L.; Zweizig, J.; Weinstein, Alan J.; Chen, Y.; LIGO Scientific Collaboration

Abstract

We perform a wide parameter-space search for continuous gravitational waves over the whole sky and over a large range of values of the frequency and the first spin-down parameter. Our search method is based on the Hough transform, which is a semicoherent, computationally efficient, and robust pattern recognition technique. We apply this technique to data from the second science run of the LIGO detectors and our final results are all-sky upper limits on the strength of gravitational waves emitted by unknown isolated spinning neutron stars on a set of narrow frequency bands in the range 200–400 Hz. The best upper limit on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude that we obtain in this frequency range is 4.43×10^(-23).

Additional Information

© 2005 The American Physical Society. Received 13 September 2005; published 28 November 2005. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the research by these agencies and by the Australian Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology of India, the Spanish Ministerio de Educaciόn y Ciencia, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Research Corporation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This document has been assigned LIGO Laboratory document number LIGOP050013-00-R.

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