Directed search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 with initial LIGO data
Name
PhysRevD.91.062008.pdf
Size
2.52 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
11d413f65b4909d25ec3b7bdfbc53430
Author(s)
Aasi, J.
Abbott, B. P.
Abbott, R.
Abbott, T.
Abernathy, M. R.
Acernese, F.
Ackley, K.
Adams, C.
Adams, T.
Addesso, P.
Date Issued
March 2015
Journal
Physical Review D
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Aasi, J., et al. "Directed search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 with initial LIGO data." Phys. Rev. D 91, 062008 (March 2015). © 2015 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We present results of a search for continuously emitted gravitational radiation, directed at the brightest low-mass x-ray binary, Scorpius X-1. Our semicoherent analysis covers 10 days of LIGO S5 data ranging from 50–550 Hz, and performs an incoherent sum of coherent F-statistic power distributed amongst frequency-modulated orbital sidebands. All candidates not removed at the veto stage were found to be consistent with noise at a 1% false alarm rate. We present Bayesian 95% confidence upper limits on gravitational-wave strain amplitude using two different prior distributions: a standard one, with no a priori assumptions about the orientation of Scorpius X-1; and an angle-restricted one, using a prior derived from electromagnetic observations. Median strain upper limits of 1.3×10[superscript -24] and 8×10[superscript -25] are reported at 150 Hz for the standard and angle-restricted searches respectively. This proof-of-principle analysis was limited to a short observation time by unknown effects of accretion on the intrinsic spin frequency of the neutron star, but improves upon previous upper limits by factors of ~1.4 for the standard, and 2.3 for the angle-restricted search at the sensitive region of the detector.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.062008
