Upper limits on gravitational wave bursts in LIGO's second science run

Journal Article · Thu Sep 15 04:00:00 EDT 2005 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.062001· OSTI ID:20713511

Abbott, B; Adhikari, R; 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; Busby, D; Cardenas, L; Chandler, A; Chapsky, J ^[1]

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1. LIGO-California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125 (United States); and others

We perform a search for gravitational wave bursts using data from the second science run of the LIGO detectors, using a method based on a wavelet time-frequency decomposition. This search is sensitive to bursts of duration much less than a second and with frequency content in the 100-1100 Hz range. It features significant improvements in the instrument sensitivity and in the analysis pipeline with respect to the burst search previously reported by LIGO. Improvements in the search method allow exploring weaker signals, relative to the detector noise floor, while maintaining a low false alarm rate, O(0.1) {mu}Hz. The sensitivity in terms of the root-sum-square (rss) strain amplitude lies in the range of h{sub rss}{approx}10{sup -20}-10{sup -19} Hz{sup -1/2}. No gravitational wave signals were detected in 9.98 days of analyzed data. We interpret the search result in terms of a frequentist upper limit on the rate of detectable gravitational wave bursts at the level of 0.26 events per day at 90% confidence level. We combine this limit with measurements of the detection efficiency for selected waveform morphologies in order to yield rate versus strength exclusion curves as well as to establish order-of-magnitude distance sensitivity to certain modeled astrophysical sources. Both the rate upper limit and its applicability to signal strengths improve our previously reported limits and reflect the most sensitive broad-band search for untriggered and unmodeled gravitational wave bursts to date.

• OSTI ID: 20713511
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 72; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
AMPLITUDES
EFFICIENCY
GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTORS
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
MORPHOLOGY
NOISE
SENSITIVITY
STRAINS
WAVE FORMS