Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-19-2017
Journal / Book Title
Physical Review D
Abstract
We describe a directed search for continuous gravitational waves in data from the sixth initial LIGO science run. The target was the nearby globular cluster NGC 6544 at a distance of ≈2.7 kpc. The search covered a broad band of frequencies along with first and second frequency derivatives for a fixed sky position. The search coherently integrated data from the two LIGO interferometers over a time span of 9.2 days using the matched-filtering F-statistic. We found no gravitational-wave signals and set 95% confidence upper limits as stringent as 6.0×10-25 on intrinsic strain and 8.5×10-6 on fiducial ellipticity. These values beat the indirect limits from energy conservation for stars with characteristic spin-down ages older than 300 years and are within the range of theoretical predictions for possible neutron-star ellipticities. An important feature of this search was use of a barycentric resampling algorithm which substantially reduced computational cost; this method is used extensively in searches of Advanced LIGO and Virgo detector data.
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevD.95.082005
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Abbott, B. P.; Abbott, R.; Abbott, T. D.; Abernathy, M. R.; Acernese, F.; Ackley, K.; Adams, C.; Adams, T.; Favata, Marc; and Ghosh, Shaon, "Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Neutron Stars In Globular Cluster NGC 6544" (2017). Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 105.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/physics-astron-facpubs/105
Published Citation
Abbott, B. P., Abbott, R., Abbott, T. D., Abernathy, M. R., Acernese, F., Ackley, K., ... & Chao, S. (2017). Search for continuous gravitational waves from neutron stars in globular cluster NGC 6544. Physical Review D, 95(8), 082005.