111 research outputs found

    Thermal effects in the Input Optics of the Enhanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory interferometers

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    We present the design and performance of the LIGO Input Optics subsystem as implemented for the sixth science run of the LIGO interferometers. The Initial LIGO Input Optics experienced thermal side effects when operating with 7 W input power. We designed, built, and implemented improved versions of the Input Optics for Enhanced LIGO, an incremental upgrade to the Initial LIGO interferometers, designed to run with 30 W input power. At four times the power of Initial LIGO, the Enhanced LIGO Input Optics demonstrated improved performance including better optical isolation, less thermal drift, minimal thermal lensing, and higher optical efficiency. The success of the Input Optics design fosters confidence for its ability to perform well in Advanced LIGO

    Mode-Cleaning and Injection Optics of the Gravitational-Wave Detector GEO600

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    The British–German interferometric gravitational-wave detector GEO600 uses two high-finesse triangular ring cavities of 8 m optical pathlength each, as an optical mode-cleaning system. The modecleaner system is housed in an ultrahigh-vacuum environment to avoid contamination of the optics and to minimize both the influence of refractive index variations of the air and acoustic coupling to the optics. To isolate the cavities from seismic noise, all optical components are suspended as double pendulums. These pendulums are damped at their resonance frequencies at the upper pendulum stage with magnet-coil actuators. A suspended reaction mass supports three coils matching magnets bonded onto the surface of one mirror of each cavity, allowing length control of the modecleaner cavities to maintain resonance with the laser light. A fully automated control system stabilizes the frequency of the slave laser to that of the master laser, the frequency of the master laser to the length of the first modecleaner and the length of the first to the length of the second modecleaner. The control system uses the Pound–Drever–Hall sideband technique and operates autonomously over long time periods with only infrequent human interaction. The duty cycle of the system was measured to be 99.7% during an 18 day period. The throughput of the whole modecleaner system is about 50%. In this article, we give an overview of the mechanical and optical setup and the achieved performance of the double modecleaner system

    Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with Fast Radio Bursts Detected by CHIME/FRB During the LIGO–Virgo Observing Run O3a

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    We search for gravitational-wave transients associated with fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB), during the first part of the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (1 April 2019 15:00 UTC–1 Oct 2019 15:00 UTC). Triggers from 22 FRBs were analyzed with a search that targets compact binary coalescences with at least one neutron star component. A targeted search for generic gravitational-wave transients was conducted on 40 FRBs. We find no significant evidence for a gravitational-wave association in either search. Given the large uncertainties in the distances of the FRBs inferred from the dispersion measures in our sample, however, this does not conclusively exclude any progenitor models that include emission of a gravitational wave of the types searched for from any of these FRB events. We report 90% confidence lower bounds on the distance to each FRB for a range of gravitational-wave progenitor models. By combining the inferred maximum distance information for each FRB with the sensitivity of the gravitational-wave searches, we set upper limits on the energy emitted through gravitational waves for a range of emission scenarios. We find values of order 1051–1057 erg for a range of different emission models with central gravitational wave frequencies in the range 70–3560Hz. Finally, we also found no significant coincident detection of gravitational waves with the repeater, FRB20200120E, which is the closest known extragalactic FRB

    Constraints on dark photon dark matter using data from LIGO’s and Virgo’s third observing run

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    We present a search for dark photon dark matter that could couple to gravitational-wave interferometers using data from Advanced LIGO and Virgo’s third observing run. To perform this analysis, we use two methods, one based on cross-correlation of the strain channels in the two nearly aligned LIGO detectors, and one that looks for excess power in the strain channels of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. The excess power method optimizes the Fourier transform coherence time as a function of frequency, to account for the expected signal width due to Doppler modulations. We do not find any evidence of dark photon dark matter with a mass between mA∼10−14–10−11  eV/c2, which corresponds to frequencies between 10–2000 Hz, and therefore provide upper limits on the square of the minimum coupling of dark photons to baryons, i.e., U(1)B dark matter. For the cross-correlation method, the best median constraint on the squared coupling is ∼1.31×10−47 at mA∼4.2×10−13  eV/c2; for the other analysis, the best constraint is ∼2.4×10−47 at mA∼5.7×10−13  eV/c2. These limits improve upon those obtained in direct dark matter detection experiments by a factor of ∼100 for mA∼[2–4]×10−13  eV/c2, and are, in absolute terms, the most stringent constraint so far in a large mass range mA∼2×10−13–8×10−12  eV/c2

    All-sky search for short gravitational-wave bursts in the third Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo run

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    This paper presents the results of a search for generic short-duration gravitational-wave transients in data from the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. Transients with durations of milliseconds to a few seconds in the 24–4096 Hz frequency band are targeted by the search, with no assumptions made regarding the incoming signal direction, polarization, or morphology. Gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences that have been identified by other targeted analyses are detected, but no statistically significant evidence for other gravitational wave bursts is found. Sensitivities to a variety of signals are presented. These include updated upper limits on the source rate density as a function of the characteristic frequency of the signal, which are roughly an order of magnitude better than previous upper limits. This search is sensitive to sources radiating as little as ∼10−10  M⊙c2 in gravitational waves at ∼70  Hz from a distance of 10 kpc, with 50% detection efficiency at a false alarm rate of one per century. The sensitivity of this search to two plausible astrophysical sources is estimated: neutron star f modes, which may be excited by pulsar glitches, as well as selected core-collapse supernova models

    Model-based Cross-correlation Search for Gravitational Waves from the Low-mass X-Ray Binary Scorpius X-1 in LIGO O3 Data

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    We present the results of a model-based search for continuous gravitational waves from the low-mass X-ray binary Scorpius X-1 using LIGO detector data from the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. This is a semicoherent search that uses details of the signal model to coherently combine data separated by less than a specified coherence time, which can be adjusted to balance sensitivity with computing cost. The search covered a range of gravitational-wave frequencies from 25 to 1600 Hz, as well as ranges in orbital speed, frequency, and phase determined from observational constraints. No significant detection candidates were found, and upper limits were set as a function of frequency. The most stringent limits, between 100 and 200 Hz, correspond to an amplitude h0 of about 10−25 when marginalized isotropically over the unknown inclination angle of the neutron star\u27s rotation axis, or less than 4 × 10−26 assuming the optimal orientation. The sensitivity of this search is now probing amplitudes predicted by models of torque balance equilibrium. For the usual conservative model assuming accretion at the surface of the neutron star, our isotropically marginalized upper limits are close to the predicted amplitude from about 70 to 100 Hz; the limits assuming that the neutron star spin is aligned with the most likely orbital angular momentum are below the conservative torque balance predictions from 40 to 200 Hz. Assuming a broader range of accretion models, our direct limits on gravitational-wave amplitude delve into the relevant parameter space over a wide range of frequencies, to 500 Hz or more

    Searches for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Young Supernova Remnants in the Early Third Observing Run of Advanced LIGO and Virgo

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    We present results of three wide-band directed searches for continuous gravitational waves from 15 young supernova remnants in the first half of the third Advanced LIGO and Virgo observing run. We use three search pipelines with distinct signal models and methods of identifying noise artifacts. Without ephemerides of these sources, the searches are conducted over a fRequency band spanning from 10 to 2 kHz. We find no evidence of continuous gravitational radiation from these sources. We set upper limits on the intrinsic signal strain at 95% confidence level in sample subbands, estimate the sensitivity in the full band, and derive the corresponding constraints on the fiducial neutron star ellipticity and r-mode amplitude. The best 95% confidence constraints placed on the signal strain are 7.7 × 10−26 and 7.8 × 10−26 near 200 Hz for the supernova remnants G39.2–0.3 and G65.7+1.2, respectively. The most stringent constraints on the ellipticity and r-mode amplitude reach ≲10−7 and ≲ 10−5, respectively, at frequencies above ∼400 Hz for the closest supernova remnant G266.2–1.2/Vela Jr

    Search for subsolar-mass black hole binaries in the second part of Advanced LIGO’s and Advanced Virgo’s third observing run

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    We describe a search for gravitational waves from compact binaries with at least one component with mass 0.2 M⊙ -- 1.0M⊙ and mass ratio q≥0.1 in Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo data collected between 1 November 2019, 15:00 UTC and 27 March 2020, 17:00 UTC. No signals were detected. The most significant candidate has a false alarm rate of 0.2 yr−1. We estimate the sensitivity of our search over the entirety of Advanced LIGO\u27s and Advanced Virgo\u27s third observing run, and present the most stringent limits to date on the merger rate of binary black holes with at least one subsolar-mass component. We use the upper limits to constrain two fiducial scenarios that could produce subsolar-mass black holes: primordial black holes (PBH) and a model of dissipative dark matter. The PBH model uses recent prescriptions for the merger rate of PBH binaries that include a rate suppression factor to effectively account for PBH early binary disruptions. If the PBHs are monochromatically distributed, we can exclude a dark matter fraction in PBHs fPBH≳0.6 (at 90% confidence) in the probed subsolar-mass range. However, if we allow for broad PBH mass distributions we are unable to rule out fPBH=1. For the dissipative model, where the dark matter has chemistry that allows a small fraction to cool and collapse into black holes, we find an upper bound fDB

    Broadband Quantum Enhancement of the LIGO Detectors with Frequency-Dependent Squeezing

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    Quantum noise imposes a fundamental limitation on the sensitivity of interferometric gravitational-wave detectors like LIGO, manifesting as shot noise and quantum radiation pressure noise. Here, we present the first realization of frequency-dependent squeezing in full-scale gravitational-wave detectors, resulting in the reduction of both shot noise and quantum radiation pressure noise, with broadband detector enhancement from tens of hertz to several kilohertz. In the LIGO Hanford detector, squeezing reduced the detector noise amplitude by a factor of 1.6 (4.0 dB) near 1 kHz; in the Livingston detector, the noise reduction was a factor of 1.9 (5.8 dB). These improvements directly impact LIGO’s scientific output for high-frequency sources (e.g., binary neutron star postmerger physics). The improved low-frequency sensitivity, which boosted the detector range by 15%–18% with respect to no squeezing, corresponds to an increase in the astrophysical detection rate of up to 65%. Frequency-dependent squeezing was enabled by the addition of a 300-meter-long filter cavity to each detector as part of the LIGO A+ upgrade
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