A search for periodic gravitational waves, from sources such as isolated rapidly-spinning neutron stars, was carried out using 510 hours of data from the fourth LIGO science run (S4). The search was for quasi-monochromatic waves in the frequency range from 50 Hz to 1500 Hz, with a linear frequency drift f-dot (measured at the solar system barycenter) in the range -f/tau < f-dot < 0.1 f/tau, where the minimum spin-down age tau was 1000 years for signals below 300 Hz and 10000 years above 300 Hz. The main computational work of the search was distributed over approximately 100000 computers volunteered by the general public. This large computing power allowed the use of a relatively long coherent integration time of 30 hours, despite the large parameter space searched. No statistically significant signals were found. The sensitivity of the search is estimated, along with the fraction of parameter space that was vetoed because of contamination by instrumental artifacts. In the 100 Hz to 200 Hz band, more than 90% of sources with dimensionless gravitational wave strain amplitude greater than 1e-23 would have been detected.
This paper reports on an all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves from sources such as deformed isolated rapidly-spinning neutron stars. The analysis uses 840 hours of data from 66 days of the fifth LIGO science run (S5). The data was searched for quasi-monochromatic waves with frequencies f in the range from 50 Hz to 1500 Hz, with a linear frequency drift \dot{f} (measured at the solar system barycenter) in the range -f/τ< \dot{f} < 0.1 f/τ, for a minimum spin-down age τof 1000 years for signals below 400 Hz and 8000 years above 400 Hz. The main computational work of the search was dis…
We present results of a search for periodic gravitational wave signals with frequency between 20 and 400 Hz, from the neutron star in the supernova remnant G347.3-0.5, using LIGO O2 public data. The search is deployed on the volunteer computing project Einstein@Home, with thousands of participants donating compute cycles to make this endevour possible. We find no significant signal candidate and set the most constraining upper limits to date on the amplitude of gravitational wave signals from the target, corresponding to deformations below $10^{-6}$ in a large part of the band. At the frequenc…
We report results of a deep all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars in data from the S6 LIGO science run. The search was possible thanks to the computing power provided by the volunteers of the Einstein@Home distributed computing project. We find no significant signal candidate and set the most stringent upper limits to date on the amplitude of gravitational wave signals from the target population. At the frequency of best strain sensitivity, between $170.5$ and $171$ Hz we set a 90% confidence upper limit of ${5.5}^{-25}$, while at the high end of our frequ…
General relativity has very specific predictions for the gravitational waveforms from inspiralling compact binaries obtained using the post-Newtonian (PN) approximation. We investigate the extent to which the measurement of the PN coefficients, possible with the second generation gravitationalwave detectors such as the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the third generation gravitational-wave detectors such as the Einstein Telescope (ET), could be used to test post-Newtonian theory and to put bounds on a subclass of parametrized-post-Einstein theories which…
We conduct an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in the LIGO O2 data from the Hanford and Livingston detectors. We search for nearly-monochromatic signals with frequency between 20.0 Hz and 585.15 Hz and spin-down between -2.6e-9 Hz/s and 2.6e-10 Hz/s. We deploy the search on the Einstein@Home volunteer-computing project and follow-up the waveforms associated with the most significant results with eight further search-stages, reaching the best sensitivity ever achieved by an all-sky survey up to 500 Hz. Six of the inspected waveforms pass all the stages but they are all associat…
We present results of a high-frequency all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves from isolated compact objects in LIGO's 5th Science Run (S5) data, using the computing power of the Einstein@Home volunteer computing project. This is the only dedicated continuous gravitational wave search that probes this high frequency range on S5 data. We find no significant candidate signal, so we set 90%-confidence level upper-limits on continuous gravitational wave strain amplitudes. At the lower end of the search frequency range, around 1250 Hz, the most constraining upper-limit is $5.0\times 10^{-…
We characterize and present the details of the follow-up method used on the most significant outliers of the Hough Einstein@Home all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves arXiv:1207.7176. This follow-up method is based on the two-stage approach introduced in arXiv:1303.2471, consisting of a semicoherent refinement followed by a fully coherent zoom. We quantify the efficiency of the follow-up pipeline using simulated signals in Gaussian noise. This pipeline does not search beyond first-order frequency spindown, and therefore we also evaluate its robustness against second-order spindown.…
We report results of an all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves with frequency between 50 and 510 Hz from isolated compact objects, i.e. neutron stars. A new hierarchical multi-stage approach is taken, supported by the computing power of the Einstein@Home project, allowing to probe more deeply than ever before. 16 million sub-threshold candidates from the initial search [LVC,arXiv:1606.09619] are followed up in three stages. None of those candidates is consistent with an isolated gravitational wave emitter, and 90% confidence level upper limits are placed on the amplitudes of continuou…
Deep Einstein@Home search for Continuous Gravitational Waves from the Central Compact Objects in the Supernova Remnants Vela Jr. and G347.3-0.5 using LIGO public data
In this paper we design a search for continuous gravitational waves from three supernova remnants: Vela Jr., Cassiopeia A (Cas A) and G347.3. These systems might harbor rapidly rotating neutron stars emitting quasi-periodic gravitational radiation detectable by the advanced LIGO detectors. Our search is designed to use the volunteer computing project Einstein@Home for a few months and assumes the sensitivity and duty cycles of the advanced LIGO detectors during their first science run. For all three supernova remnants, the sky-positions of their central compact objects are well known but the f…
We present a detailed approach for making use of two new computer hardware architectures -- CBEA and CUDA -- for accelerating a scientific data-analysis application (Einstein@Home). Our results suggest that both the architectures suit the application quite well and the achievable performance in the same software developmental time-frame, is nearly identical.
Current tests of General Relativity are performed using approximations which neglect a key feature of complete solution of Einstein's theory: higher-order modes. Our analysis will reassess these tests, including these higher-order mode effects. We have chosen to perform inspiral-merger-ringdown consistency tests on the gravitational transients detected by LIGO and Virgo during the observing run O2. We use an approximant which includes all higher modes with $\ell \le 4$ (NRSur7dq2) and then, for the most interesting cases, we repeat the tests involving fits on Numerical Relativity simulations.
Formation of primordial black holes from inflationary fluctuations is accompanied by a scalar induced gravitational wave background. We perform a Bayesian search of such background in the data from Advanced LIGO and Virgo's first, second and third observing runs, parametrizing the peak in the curvature power spectrum by a log-normal distribution. The search shows no evidence for such a background. We place 95\% confidence level upper limits on the integrated power of the curvature power spectrum peak which, for a narrow width, reaches down to $0.02$ at $10^{17}\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$. The resulting …
The direct detection of gravitational waves with the next generation detectors, like Advanced LIGO, provides the opportunity to measure deviations from the predictions of General Relativity. One such departure would be the existence of alternative polarizations. To measure these, we study a single detector measurement of a continuous gravitational wave from a triaxial pulsar source. We develop methods to detect signals of any polarization content and distinguish between them in a model independent way. We present LIGO S5 sensitivity estimates for 115 pulsars.
In the first Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue of LIGO and Virgo, all events are announced having zero eccentricity. In the present paper, we investigate the performance of SEOBNRE which is a spin-aligned eccentric waveform model in time-domain. By comparing with all the eccentric waveforms in SXS library, we find that the SEOBNRE coincides perfectly with numerical relativity data. Employing the SEOBNRE, we re-estimate the eccentricities of all black hole merger events. We find that most of these events allow a possibility for existence of initial eccentricities at 10 Hz band, but are tot…
It is shown that a linearized classical gravity wave $\hat{a}$ {\em la} Einstein can get entangled with an array of test masses in a plane perpendicular to its direction of propagation. A Bell-CHSH inequality based on the requirement of noncontextuality for classical realism is derived, and it is shown that the entangled state produced violates this inequality.
The multiple detections of gravitational waves by LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), operated by Caltech and MIT, have been acclaimed as confirming Einstein's prediction, a century ago, that gravitational waves propagating as ripples in spacetime would be detected. Yunes and Pretorius (2009) investigate whether LIGO's template-based searches encode fundamental assumptions, especially the assumption that the background theory of general relativity is an accurate description of the phenomena detected in the search. They construct the parametrized post-Einsteinian (pp…
We report results of the most sensitive search to date for periodic gravitational waves from Cassiopeia A, Vela Jr. and G347.3 with frequency between 20 and 1500 Hz. The search was made possible by the computing power provided by the volunteers of the Einstein@Home project and improves on previous results by a factor of 2 across the entire frequency range for all targets. We find no significant signal candidate and set the most stringent upper limits to date on the amplitude of gravitational wave signals from the target population, corresponding to sensitivity depths between 54 $[1/ {\sqrt{\te…
Gravitational-wave astronomy offers not only new vistas into the realm of astrophysics, but it also opens an avenue for probing, for the first time, general relativity in its strong-field, nonlinear, and dynamical regime, where the theory's predictions manifest themselves in their full glory. We present a study of whether the gravitational wave events detected so far by the LIGO-Virgo scientific collaborations can be used to probe higher-curvature corrections to general relativity. In particular, we focus on two examples: Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet and dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. We fin…
Gravitational waves (GWs) are expected to play a crucial role in the development of multimessenger astrophysics. The combination of GW observations with other astrophysical triggers, such as from gamma-ray and X-ray satellites, optical/radio telescopes, and neutrino detectors allows us to decipher science that would otherwise be inaccessible. In this paper, we provide a broad review from the multimessenger perspective of the science reach offered by the third generation interferometric GW detectors and by the Einstein Telescope (ET) in particular. We focus on cosmic transients, and base our es…
We report the results of a directed search for continuous gravitational-wave emission in a broad frequency range (between 50 and 1000 Hz) from the central compact object of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). The data comes from the sixth science run of LIGO and the search is performed on the volunteer distributed computing network Einstein@Home. We find no significant signal candidate, and set the most constraining upper limits to date on the gravitational-wave emission from Cas A, which beat the indirect age-based upper limit across the entire search range. At around 170 Hz (the most…
General relativity predicts mass and spin growth of an inspiralling black hole due to an energy-momentum flux flowing through the black-hole horizon. The leading-order terms of this horizon flux introduce 2.5 and 3.5 post-Newtonian corrections to inspiral motions of binary black holes. The corrections may be measurable by gravitational waves detectors. Since the proper improvements to general relativity is still a mystery, it is possible that the true modified gravity theory introduces negligible direct corrections to the geodesics of test masses, while near horizon corrections are observable.…
Overlap reduction functions for a polarized stochastic gravitational-wave background in the Einstein Telescope-Cosmic Explorer and the LISA-Taiji networks
本文将基于球谐展开的重叠减少函数计算方法推广到第三代地基 Einstein Telescope-Cosmic Explorer 网络及 LISA-Taiji 空间联合任务，以分析极化随机引力波背景。
X-ray observations of some short gamma-ray bursts indicate that a long-lived neutron star can form as a remnant of a binary neutron star merger. We develop a gravitational-wave detection pipeline for a long-lived binary neutron star merger remnant guided by these counterpart electromagnetic observations. We determine the distance out to which a gravitational-wave signal can be detected with Advanced LIGO at design sensitivity and the Einstein Telescope using this method, guided by X-ray data from GRB140903A as an example. Such gravitational waves can in principle be detected out to $\sim$ 20 M…
Unlike the electromagnetic radiation from astrophysical objects, gravitational waves (GWs) from binary star mergers have much longer wavelengths and are coherent. For ground-based GW detectors, when the lens object between the source and the earth has mass $\sim 1-10^5M_\odot$, the diffraction effect should be considered since the chirping wavelengths are comparable to the scale of the barrier (its Schwarzschild radius). The waveform will thus be distorted as the fringes. In this work, we show that signals from the third-generation GW detectors like the Einstein Telescope (ET) would be a smoki…
Short-duration gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) are widely believed to be powered by the mergers of compact binaries, such as binary neutron stars or possibly neutron star-black hole binaries. Though the prospect of detecting SGRBs with gravitational wave (GW) signals by the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)/VIRGO network is promising, no known SGRB has been found within the expected advanced LIGO/VIRGO sensitivity range for binary neutron star systems. We find, however, that the two long-short GRBs (GRB 060505 and GRB 060614) may be within the horizon of advanced GW …
A conservative constraint on the Einstein Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) can be obtained under the assumption that the observed time delay between correlated particles from astronomical sources is dominated by the gravitational fields through which they move. Current limits on the WEP are mainly based on the observed time delays of photons with different energies. It is highly desirable to develop more accurate tests that include the gravitational wave (GW) sector. The detection by the advanced LIGO/VIRGO systems of gravitational waves will provide attractive candidates for constraining the …
We have conducted a new search for radio pulsars in compact binary systems in the Parkes multi-beam pulsar survey (PMPS) data, employing novel methods to remove the Doppler modulation from binary motion. This has yielded unparalleled sensitivity to pulsars in compact binaries. The required computation time of approximately 17000 CPU core years was provided by the distributed volunteer computing project Einstein@Home, which has a sustained computing power of about 1 PFlop/s. We discovered 24 new pulsars in our search, of which 18 were isolated pulsars, and six were members of binary systems. De…
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) is one of a new generation of detectors of gravitational radiation. The existence of gravitational radiation was first predicted by Einstein in 1916, however gravitational waves have not yet been directly observed. One source of gravitation radiation is binary inspiral. Two compact bodies orbiting each other, such as a pair of black holes, lose energy to gravitational radiation. As the system loses energy the bodies spiral towards each other. This causes their orbital speed and the amount of gravitational radiation to increase, pro…
Correlated magnetic noise in the form of Schumann resonances could introduce limitations to the gravitational-wave background searches of future Earth-based gravitational-wave detectors. We consider recorded magnetic activity at a candidate site for the Einstein Telescope, and forecast the necessary measures to ensure that magnetic contamination will not pose a threat to the science goals of this third-generation detector. In addition to global magnetic effects, we study local magnetic noise and the impact it might have on co-located interferometers. We express our results as upper limits on t…
Observation and characterisation of gravitational waves from binary black holes requires accurate knowledge of the expected waveforms. The late inspiral and merger phase of the waveform is obtained through direct numerical integration of the full 3-dimensional Einstein equations. The Spectral Einstein Code (SpEC) utilizes a multi-domain pseudo-spectral method tightly adapted to the geometry of the black holes; it is computationally efficient and accurate, but--for high mass-ratios and large spins--sometimes requires manual fine-tuning for the merger-phase of binaries. The Einstein Toolkit (ET)…
We report here the Einstein@Home discovery of PSR J1913+1102, a 27.3-ms pulsar found in data from the ongoing Arecibo PALFA pulsar survey. The pulsar is in a 4.95-hr double neutron star (DNS) system with an eccentricity of 0.089. From radio timing with the Arecibo 305-m telescope, we measure the rate of advance of periastron to be 5.632(18) deg/yr. Assuming general relativity accurately models the orbital motion, this corresponds to a total system mass of 2.875(14) solar masses, similar to the mass of the most massive DNS known to date, B1913+16, but with a much smaller eccentricity. The small…
We discuss the potential of the advanced ground-based gravitational-wave detectors such as LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA to detect generic deviations of gravitational waveforms from the predictions of general relativity. We use the parameterized post-Einsteinian formalism to characterize the deviations, and assess what magnitude of deviations are detectable by using an approximate decision scheme based on Bayesian statistics. We find that there exist detectable regions of the parameterized post-Einsteinian parameters for different binary masses from the observation of a single gravitational wave even…
We consider an alternative cold dark matter candidate, ultralight bosons ($m>10^{-22}$eV) described by a complex scalar field (SFDM) with global U(1) symmetry, with comoving particle number density conserved after particle production during standard reheating. We allow for repulsive self-interaction. In a Lambda-SFDM universe, SFDM starts relativistic, evolving from stiff (w=1) to radiation-like (w=1/3), becoming nonrelativistic (w=0) at late times. Thus, a stiff-SFDM-dominated era precedes the familiar radiation-dominated era. SFDM particle mass $m$ and quartic self-interaction strength λ, ar…
The Einstein Telescope (ET), a proposed European ground-based gravitational-wave detector of third-generation, is an evolution of second-generation detectors such as Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and KAGRA which could be operating in the mid 2030s. ET will explore the universe with gravitational waves up to cosmological distances. We discuss its main scientific objectives and its potential for discoveries in astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics.
Gravitational wave astronomy opened dramatically in September 2015 with the LIGO discovery of a distant and massive binary black hole coalescence. The more recent discovery of a binary neutron star merger, followed by a gamma ray burst and a kilonova, reinforces the excitement of this new era, in which we may soon see other sources of gravitational waves, including continuous, nearly monochromatic signals. Potential continuous wave (CW) sources include rapidly spinning galactic neutron stars and more exotic possibilities, such as emission from axion Bose Einstein "clouds" surrounding black hol…
The nonattractor evolution in ultra-slow-roll (USR) inflation results in the amplification of superhorizon curvature perturbations and then induces a strong and detectable stochastic gravitational wave background. In this letter, we search for such a stochastic gravitational wave background in data from the third LIGO-Virgo observing run and place constraints on the USR inflationary models. The $e$-folding number of the USR phase are constrained to be $ΔN \lesssim 2.9$ at the 95% confidence level and the power spectrum of curvature perturbations amplified during the USR phase is constrained to…
The LIGO-VIRGO collaboration has detected directly on Earth the gravitational wave signals generated by the collision and the merger of two massive black holes at astronomical distance. This major discovery opens up the way to Gravitational Astronomy, which should revolutionize our comprehension of the structure of the Universe at large scales, with notably the mechanisms of formation of black holes and their role in the evolution of the Universe, the likely emergence of a multi-messenger astronomy joint with electromagnetic radiation, and a better appraisal of the status of general relativity…
Stellar core collapse events are expected to produce gravitational waves via several mechanisms, most of which are not yet fully understood due to the current limitations in the numerical simulations of these events. In this paper, we begin with an empirical functional form that fits the gravitational-wave spectra from existing simulations of stellar core collapse and integrate over all collapse events in the universe to estimate the resulting stochastic gravitational-wave background. We then use a Gaussian functional form to separately fit and model a low-frequency peak in the core-collapse s…
Gravitational waves encode invaluable information about the nature of the relatively unexplored extreme gravity regime, where the gravitational interaction is strong, non-linear and highly dynamical. Recent gravitational wave observations by advanced LIGO have provided the first glimpses into this regime, allowing for the extraction of new inferences on different aspects of theoretical physics. For example, these detections provide constraints on the mass of the graviton, Lorentz violation in the gravitational sector, the existence of large extra dimensions, the temporal variability of Newton'…
Einstein Telescope (ET) is conceived to be a third generation gravitational-wave observatory. Its amplitude sensitivity would be a factor ten better than advanced LIGO and Virgo and it could also extend the low-frequency sensitivity down to 1--3 Hz, compared to the 10--20 Hz of advanced detectors. Such an observatory will have the potential to observe a variety of different GW sources, including compact binary systems at cosmological distances. ET's expected reach for binary neutron star (BNS) coalescences is out to redshift $z\simeq 2$ and the rate of detectable BNS coalescences could be as h…
Deconfined quark matter may exist in a crystalline color-superconducting phase in the interiors of compact stars. In this paper, we study the torsional oscillations of compact stars featuring a crystalline color-superconducting quark-matter core in general relativity. Depending on the size of the crystalline core and the value of the gap parameter $Δ$, we find that the frequencies of the torsional oscillation modes can range from a few hundred hertz to a few kilohertz for our canonical $1.4 M_\odot$ compact star models. We have also studied the prospect for detecting the gravitational-wave sig…
[Abridged] We introduce an improved version of the Eccentric, Non-spinning, Inspiral-Gaussian-process Merger Approximant (ENIGMA) waveform model. We find that this ready-to-use model can: (i) produce physically consistent signals when sampling over 1M samples chosen over the $m_{\{1,\,2\}}\in[5M_{\odot},\,50M_{\odot}]$ parameter space, and the entire range of binary inclination angles; (ii) produce waveforms within 0.04 seconds from an initial gravitational wave frequency $f_{\textrm{GW}} =15\,\textrm{Hz}$ and at a sample rate of 8192 Hz; and (iii) reproduce the physics of quasi-circular merge…
We derive two different methods to compute the minimal required integration time of a fully coherent follow-up of candidates produced in wide parameter space semi-coherent searches, such as global correlation StackSlide searches using Einstein@Home. We numerically compare these methods in terms of integration duration and computing cost. In a Monte Carlo study we confirm that we can achieve the required detection probability.
In a recent paper we have shown that a minimally coupled, self-interacting scalar field of mass $m$ can form black holes of mass $M=\sqrt{3}/(4m)$ (in Planck units). If dark matter is composed by axions, they can form miniclusters that for QCD axions have masses below this value. In this work it is shown that for a scenario in which the axion mass depends on the temperature as $m \propto T^{-6}$, minicluster masses above $0.32\,M_\odot$, corresponding to an axion mass of $3\times 10^{-10}$ eV, exceed $M$ and can collapse into black holes. If a fraction of these black holes is in binary systems…
Gravitational-wave (GW) data can be used to test general relativity in the highly nonlinear and strong field regime. Modified gravity theories such as Einstein-dilation-Gauss-Bonnet and dynamical Chern-Simons can be tested with the additional GW signals detected in the first half of the third observing run of Advanced LIGO/Virgo. Specifically, we analyze gravitational-wave data of GW190412 and GW190814 to place constraints on the parameters of these two theories. Our results indicate that dynamical Chern-Simons gravity remains unconstrained. For Einstein-dilation-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, we find …
The recent Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo joint observing runs have not claimed a stochastic gravitational-wave background detection, but one expects this to change as the sensitivity of the detectors improves. The challenge of claiming a true detection will be immediately succeeded by the difficulty of relating the signal to the sources that contribute to it. In this paper, we consider backgrounds that comprise compact binary coalescences and additional cosmological sources, and we set simultaneous upper limits on these backgrounds. We find that the Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo network, op…
