Upper limit map of a background of gravitational waves

Abbott, B. et al. (2007) Upper limit map of a background of gravitational waves. Physical Review D, 76(8), (doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.76.082003)

Abstract

We searched for an anisotropic background of gravitational waves usingdata from the LIGO S4 science run and a method that is optimizedfor point sources. This is appropriate if, for example, the gravitationalwave background is dominated by a small number of distinct astrophysical sources.No signal was seen. Upper limit maps were produced assuming two differentpower laws for the source strain power spectrum. For an f^-3 power law and using the50 Hz to 1.8 kHz band the upper limits on the sourcestrain power spectrum vary between 1.2×10^-48  Hz^-1 (100  Hz/f)³ and 1.2×10^-47  Hz^-1 (100  Hz/f)³, depending on the position in the sky. Similarly,in the case of constant strain power spectrum, the upper limits vary between 8.5×10^-49  Hz^-1 and 6.1×10^-48  Hz^-1. As a side product a limiton an isotropic background of gravitational waves was also obtained. All limitsare at the 90% confidence level. Finally, as an application, we focused onthe direction of Sco-X1, the brightest low-mass x-ray binary. We compare theupper limit on strain amplitude obtained by this method to expectations basedon the x-ray flux from Sco-X1.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Heptonstall, Dr Alastair and Grant, Mr Alastair and Cagnoli, Dr Gianpietro and Cantley, Dr Caroline and Rowan, Professor Sheila and Messenger, Dr Christopher and Bogenstahl, Miss Johanna and Martin, Dr Iain and Casey, Dr Morag and Barr, Dr Bryan and Reid, Professor Stuart and Cumming, Dr Alan and Tokmakov, Dr Kirill and Veitch, Dr John and Plissi, Dr Michael and Woan, Professor Graham and Heng, Professor Ik Siong and Crooks, Dr David and Hough, Professor James and Ward, Professor Henry and Newton, Dr Gavin and Torrie, Dr Calum and Huttner, Dr Sabina and Strain, Professor Kenneth and Jones, Mr Russell and Pitkin, Dr Matthew and Murray, Dr Peter and Barton, Dr Mark
• Authors: Abbott, B., Abbott, R., Adhikari, R., Agresti, J., Ajith, P., Allen, B., Amin, R., Anderson, S., Anderson, W., Arain, M., Araya, M., Armandula, H., Ashley, M., Aston, S., Aufmuth, P., Aulbert, C., Babak, S., Ballmer, S., Bantilan, H., Barish, B., Barker, C., Barker, D., Barr, B., Barriga, P., Barton, M., Bayer, K., Belczynski, K., Betzwieser, J., Beyersdorf, P., Bhawal, B., Bilenko, I., Billingsley, G., Biswas, R., Black, E., Blackburn, K., Blackburn, L., Blair, D., Bland, B., Bogenstahl, J., Bogue, L., Bork, R., Boschi, V., Bose, S., Brady, P., Braginsky, V., Brau, J., Brinkmann, M., Brooks, A., Brown, D., Bullington, A., Bunkowski, A., Buonanno, A., Burmeister, O., Busby, D., Byer, R., Cadonati, L., Cagnoli, G., Camp, J., Cannizzo, J., Cannon, K., Cantley, C., Cao, J., Cardenas, L., Casey, M., Castaldi, G., Cepeda, C., Chalkey, E., Charlton, P., Chatterji, S., Chelkowski, S., Chen, Y., Chiadini, F., Chin, D., Chin, E., Chow, J., Christensen, N., Clark, J., Cochrane, P., Cokelaer, T., Colacino, C., Coldwell, R., Conte, R., Cook, D., Corbitt, T., Coward, D., Coyne, D., Creighton, J., Creighton, T., Croce, R., Crooks, D.R.M., Cruise, A., Cumming, A., Dalrymple, J., D’Ambrosio, E., Danzmann, K., Davies, G., DeBra, D., Degallaix, J., Degree, M., Demma, T., Dergachev, V., Desai, S., DeSalvo, R., Dhurandhar, S., Díaz, M., Dickson, J., Di Credico, A., Diederichs, G., Dietz, A., Doomes, E., Drever, R., Dumas, J.-C., Dupuis, R., Dwyer, J., Ehrens, P., Espinoza, E., Etzel, T., Evans, M., Evans, T., Fairhurst, S., Fan, Y., Fazi, D., Fejer, M., Finn, L., Fiumara, V., Fotopoulos, N., Franzen, A., Franzen, K., Freise, A., Frey, R., Fricke, T., Fritschel, P., Frolov, V., Fyffe, M., Galdi, V., Garofoli, J., Gholami, I., Giaime, J., Giampanis, S., Giardina, K., Goda, K., Goetz, E., Goggin, L., González, G., Gossler, S., Grant, A., Gras, S., Gray, C., Gray, M., Greenhalgh, J., Gretarsson, A., Grosso, R., Grote, H., Grunewald, S., Guenther, M., Gustafson, R., Hage, B., Hammer, D., Hanna, C., Hanson, J., Harms, J., Harry, G., Harstad, E., Hayler, T., Heefner, J., Heng, I., Heptonstall, A., Heurs, M., Hewitson, M., Hild, S., Hirose, E., Hoak, D., Hosken, D., Hough, J., Howell, E., Hoyland, D., Huttner, S., Ingram, D., Innerhofer, E., Ito, M., Itoh, Y., Ivanov, A., Jackrel, D., Johnson, B., Johnson, W., Jones, D., Jones, G., Jones, R., Ju, L., Kalmus, P., Kalogera, V., Kasprzyk, D., Katsavounidis, E., Kawabe, K., Kawamura, S., Kawazoe, F., Kells, W., Keppel, D., Khalili, F., Kim, C., King, P., Kissel, J., Klimenko, S., Kokeyama, K., Kondrashov, V., Kopparapu, R., Kozak, D., Krishnan, B., Kwee, P., Lam, P., Landry, M., Lantz, B., Lazzarini, A., Lee, B., Lei, M., Leiner, J., Leonhardt, V., Leonor, I., Libbrecht, K., Lindquist, P., Lockerbie, N., Longo, M., Lormand, M., Lubinski, M., Lück, H., Machenschalk, B., MacInnis, M., Mageswaran, M., Mailand, K., Malec, M., Mandic, V., Marano, S., Márka, S., Markowitz, J., Maros, E., Martin, I., Marx, J., Mason, K., Matone, L., Matta, V., Mavalvala, N., McCarthy, R., McClelland, D., McGuire, S., McHugh, M., McKenzie, K., McNabb, J., McWilliams, S., Meier, T., Melissinos, A., Mendell, G., Mercer, R., Meshkov, S., Messaritaki, E., Messenger, C., Meyers, D., Mikhailov, E., Mitra, S., Mitrofanov, V., Mitselmakher, G., Mittleman, R., Miyakawa, O., Mohanty, S., Moreno, G., Mossavi, K., MowLowry, C., Moylan, A., Mudge, D., Mueller, G., Mukherjee, S., Müller-Ebhardt, H., Munch, J., Murray, P., Myers, E., Myers, J., Newton, G., Nishizawa, A., Numata, K., O’Reilly, B., O’Shaughnessy, R., Ottaway, D., Overmier, H., Owen, B., Pan, Y., Papa, M., Parameshwaraiah, V., Patel, P., Pedraza, M., Penn, S., Pierro, V., Pinto, I., Pitkin, M., Pletsch, H., Plissi, M., Postiglione, F., Prix, R., Quetschke, V., Raab, F., Rabeling, D., Radkins, H., Rahkola, R., Rainer, N., Rakhmanov, M., Rawlins, K., Ray-Majumder, S., Re, V., Rehbein, H., Reid, S., Reitze, D., Ribichini, L., Riesen, R., Riles, K., Rivera, B., Robertson, N., Robinson, C., Robinson, E., Roddy, S., Rodriguez, A., Rogan, A., Rollins, J., Romano, J., Romie, J., Route, R., Rowan, S., Rüdiger, A., Ruet, L., Russell, P., Ryan, K., Sakata, S., Samidi, M., Sancho de la Jordana, L., Sandberg, V., Sannibale, V., Saraf, S., Sarin, P., Sathyaprakash, B., Sato, S., Saulson, P., Savage, R., Savov, P., Schediwy, S., Schilling, R., Schnabel, R., Schofield, R., Schutz, B., Schwinberg, P., Scott, S., Searle, A., Sears, B., Seifert, F., Sellers, D., Sengupta, A., Shawhan, P., Shoemaker, D., Sibley, A., Sidles, J., Siemens, X., Sigg, D., Sinha, S., Sintes, A., Slagmolen, B., Slutsky, J., Smith, J., Smith, M., Somiya, K., Strain, K., Strom, D., Stuver, A., Summerscales, T., Sun, K.-X., Sung, M., Sutton, P., Takahashi, H., Tanner, D., Tarallo, M., Taylor, R., Taylor, R., Thacker, J., Thorne, K., Thorne, K., Thüring, A., Tokmakov, K., Torres, C., Torrie, C., Traylor, G., Trias, M., Tyler, W., Ugolini, D., Ungarelli, C., Urbanek, K., Vahlbruch, H., Vallisneri, M., Van Den Broeck, C., Varvella, M., Vass, S., Vecchio, A., Veitch, J., Veitch, P., Villar, A., Vorvick, C., Vyachanin, S., Waldman, S., Wallace, L., Ward, H., Ward, R., Watts, K., Webber, D., Weidner, A., Weinert, M., Weinstein, A., Weiss, R., Wen, S., Wette, K., Whelan, J., Whitbeck, D., Whitcomb, S., Whiting, B., Wilkinson, C., Willems, P., Williams, L., Willke, B., Wilmut, I., Winkler, W., Wipf, C., Wise, S., Wiseman, A., Woan, G., Woods, D., Wooley, R., Worden, J., Wu, W., Yakushin, I., Yamamoto, H., Yan, Z., Yoshida, S., Yunes, N., Zanolin, M., Zhang, J., Zhang, L., Zhao, C., Zotov, N., Zucker, M., zur Mühlen, H., and Zweizig, J.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
• Research Centre: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy > Institute for Gravitational Research
• Journal Name: Physical Review D
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• ISSN: 1550-7998
• ISSN (Online): 1089-4918

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
45931	2	Investigations in Gravitational Radiation.	Sheila Rowan	Science & Technologies Facilities Council (STFC)	ST/I001085/1	Physics and Astronomy