Search

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10–500 s in a frequency band of 40–1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between $3.4\times 10^{-5}$ and $9.4\times 10^{-4}{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-3}{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$ at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves.

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational-wave transients in the data from the Advanced LIGO second observation run; we search for gravitational-wave transients of 2–500 s duration in the 24–2048 Hz frequency band with minimal assumptions about signal properties such as waveform morphologies, polarization, sky location or time of occurrence. Signal families covered by these search algorithms include fallback accretion onto neutron stars, broadband chirps from innermost stable circular orbit waves around rotating black holes, eccentric inspiral-merger-ringdown compact binary coalescence waveforms, and other models. The second observation run totals about 118.3 days of coincident data between November 2016 and August 2017. We find no significant events within the parameter space that we searched, apart from the already-reported binary neutron star merger GW170817. We thus report sensitivity limits on the root-sum-square strain amplitude $h_{\mathrm{rss}}$ at 50% efficiency. These sensitivity estimates are an improvement relative to the first observing run and also done with an enlarged set of gravitational-wave transient waveforms. Overall, the best search sensitivity is $h_{\mathrm{rss}}^{50\%}=2.7\times {10}^{-22}{\mathrm{Hz}}^{-1/2}$ for a millisecond magnetar model. For eccentric compact binary coalescence signals, the search sensitivity reaches $h_{\mathrm{rss}}^{50\%}=9.6\times {10}^{-22}{\mathrm{Hz}}^{-1/2}$.

The detection of gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo provides an opportunity to test general relativity in a regime that is inaccessible to traditional astronomical observations and laboratory tests. We present four tests of the consistency of the data with binary black hole gravitational waveforms predicted by general relativity. One test subtracts the best-fit waveform from the data and checks the consistency of the residual with detector noise. The second test checks the consistency of the low- and high-frequency parts of the observed signals. The third test checks that phenomenological deviations introduced in the waveform model (including in the post-Newtonian coefficients) are consistent with 0. The fourth test constrains modifications to the propagation of gravitational waves due to a modified dispersion relation, including that from a massive graviton. We present results both for individual events and also results obtained by combining together particularly strong events from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, as collected in the catalog GWTC-1. We do not find any inconsistency of the data with the predictions of general relativity and improve our previously presented combined constraints by factors of 1.1 to 2.5. In particular, we bound the mass of the graviton to be $m_g\le 4.7\times {10}^{-23}\mathrm{eV}/c^2$ (90% credible level), an improvement of a factor of 1.6 over our previously presented results. Additionally, we check that the four gravitational-wave events published for the first time in GWTC-1 do not lead to stronger constraints on alternative polarizations than those published previously.

Cosmic strings are topological defects which can be formed in grand unified theory scale phase transitions in the early universe. They are also predicted to form in the context of string theory. The main mechanism for a network of Nambu-Goto cosmic strings to lose energy is through the production of loops and the subsequent emission of gravitational waves, thus offering an experimental signature for the existence of cosmic strings. Here we report on the analysis conducted to specifically search for gravitational-wave bursts from cosmic string loops in the data of Advanced LIGO 2015-2016 observing run (O1). No evidence of such signals was found in the data, and as a result we set upper limits on the cosmic string parameters for three recent loop distribution models. In this paper, we initially derive constraints on the string tension $G\mu$ and the intercommutation probability, using not only the burst analysis performed on the O1 data set but also results from the previously published LIGO stochastic O1 analysis, pulsar timing arrays, cosmic microwave background and big-bang nucleosynthesis experiments. We show that these data sets are complementary in that they probe gravitational waves produced by cosmic string loops during very different epochs. Finally, we show that the data sets exclude large parts of the parameter space of the three loop distribution models we consider.

We compare GW150914 directly to simulations of coalescing binary black holes in full general relativity, including several performed specifically to reproduce this event. Our calculations go beyond existing semianalytic models, because for all simulations—including sources with two independent, precessing spins—we perform comparisons which account for all the spin-weighted quadrupolar modes, and separately which account for all the quadrupolar and octopolar modes. Consistent with the posterior distributions reported by Abbott et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102 (2016)] (at the 90% credible level), we find the data are compatible with a wide range of nonprecessing and precessing simulations. Follow-up simulations performed using previously estimated binary parameters most resemble the data, even when all quadrupolar and octopolar modes are included. Comparisons including only the quadrupolar modes constrain the total redshifted mass $M_z\in [64M_{\odot }-82M_{\odot }]$, mass ratio $1/q=m_2/m_1\in [0.6,1]$, and effective aligned spin ${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}\in [-0.3,0.2]$, where ${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}=({\mathbf{S}}_1/m_1+{\mathbf{S}}_2/m_2)·\widehat{\mathbf{L}}/M$. Including both quadrupolar and octopolar modes, we find the mass ratio is even more tightly constrained. Even accounting for precession, simulations with extreme mass ratios and effective spins are highly inconsistent with the data, at any mass. Several nonprecessing and precessing simulations with similar mass ratio and ${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}$ are consistent with the data. Though correlated, the components’ spins (both in magnitude and directions) are not significantly constrained by the data: the data is consistent with simulations with component spin magnitudes $a_{1,2}$ up to at least 0.8, with random orientations. Further detailed follow-up calculations are needed to determine if the data contain a weak imprint from transverse (precessing) spins. For nonprecessing binaries, interpolating between simulations, we reconstruct a posterior distribution consistent with previous results. The final black hole’s redshifted mass is consistent with $M_{f,z}$ in the range $64.0M_{\odot }-73.5M_{\odot }$ and the final black hole’s dimensionless spin parameter is consistent with $a_f=0.62–0.73$. As our approach invokes no intermediate approximations to general relativity and can strongly reject binaries whose radiation is inconsistent with the data, our analysis provides a valuable complement to Abbott et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102 (2016)].

On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of $1.0\times {10}^{-21}$. It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203 000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than $5.1\sigma$. The source lies at a luminosity distance of $410_{-180}^{+160}\mathrm{Mpc}$ corresponding to a redshift $z=0.09_{-0.04}^{+0.03}$. In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are $36_{-4}^{+5}{M}_{\odot }$ and $29_{-4}^{+4}{M}_{\odot }$, and the final black hole mass is $62_{-4}^{+4}{M}_{\odot }$, with $3.0_{-0.5}^{+0.5}{M}_{\odot }{c}^2$ radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90% credible intervals. These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.

The LIGO detection of GW150914 provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the two-body motion of a compact-object binary in the large-velocity, highly nonlinear regime, and to witness the final merger of the binary and the excitation of uniquely relativistic modes of the gravitational field. We carry out several investigations to determine whether GW150914 is consistent with a binary black-hole merger in general relativity. We find that the final remnant’s mass and spin, as determined from the low-frequency (inspiral) and high-frequency (postinspiral) phases of the signal, are mutually consistent with the binary black-hole solution in general relativity. Furthermore, the data following the peak of GW150914 are consistent with the least-damped quasinormal mode inferred from the mass and spin of the remnant black hole. By using waveform models that allow for parametrized general-relativity violations during the inspiral and merger phases, we perform quantitative tests on the gravitational-wave phase in the dynamical regime and we determine the first empirical bounds on several high-order post-Newtonian coefficients. We constrain the graviton Compton wavelength, assuming that gravitons are dispersed in vacuum in the same way as particles with mass, obtaining a 90%-confidence lower bound of ${10}^{13}\mathrm{km}$. In conclusion, within our statistical uncertainties, we find no evidence for violations of general relativity in the genuinely strong-field regime of gravity.

We report on a comprehensive all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency band 100–1500 Hz and with a frequency time derivative in the range of $[-1.18,+1.00]\times 10^{-8}\mathrm{Hz}/\mathrm{s}$. Such a signal could be produced by a nearby spinning and slightly nonaxisymmetric isolated neutron star in our galaxy. This search uses the data from the initial LIGO sixth science run and covers a larger parameter space with respect to any past search. A Loosely Coherent detection pipeline was applied to follow up weak outliers in both Gaussian (95% recovery rate) and non-Gaussian (75% recovery rate) bands. No gravitational wave signals were observed, and upper limits were placed on their strength. Our smallest upper limit on worst-case (linearly polarized) strain amplitude $h_0$ is $9.7\times 10^{-25}$ near 169 Hz, while at the high end of our frequency range we achieve a worst-case upper limit of $5.5\times 10^{-24}$. Both cases refer to all sky locations and entire range of frequency derivative values.

Current interferometric gravitational-wave detectors are limited by quantum noise over a wide range of their measurement bandwidth. One method to overcome the quantum limit is the injection of squeezed vacuum states of light into the interferometer’s dark port. Here, we report on the successful application of this quantum technology to improve the shot noise limited sensitivity of the Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detector. A sensitivity enhancement of up to $3.2\pm 0.1\mathrm{dB}$ beyond the shot noise limit is achieved. This nonclassical improvement corresponds to a 5%–8% increase of the binary neutron star horizon. The squeezing injection was fully automated and over the first 5 months of the third joint LIGO-Virgo observation run O3 squeezing was applied for more than 99% of the science time. During this period several gravitational-wave candidates have been recorded.

The Advanced LIGO observatories detected gravitational waves from two binary black hole mergers during their first observation run (O1). We present a high-energy neutrino follow-up search for the second gravitational wave event, GW151226, as well as for gravitational wave candidate LVT151012. We find two and four neutrino candidates detected by IceCube, and one and zero detected by Antares, within $\pm 500\mathrm{s}$ around the respective gravitational wave signals, consistent with the expected background rate. None of these neutrino candidates are found to be directionally coincident with GW151226 or LVT151012. We use nondetection to constrain isotropic-equivalent high-energy neutrino emission from GW151226, adopting the GW event’s 3D localization, to less than $2\times 10^{51}–2\times 10^{54}\mathrm{erg}$.

We report on an all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency band 20–475 Hz and with a frequency time derivative in the range of $[-1.0,+0.1]\times {10}^{-8}\mathrm{Hz}/\mathrm{s}$. Such a signal could be produced by a nearby spinning and slightly nonaxisymmetric isolated neutron star in our galaxy. This search uses the data from Advanced LIGO’s first observational run, O1. No periodic gravitational wave signals were observed, and upper limits were placed on their strengths. The lowest upper limits on worst-case (linearly polarized) strain amplitude $h_0$ are $\sim 4\times {10}^{-25}$ near 170 Hz. For a circularly polarized source (most favorable orientation), the smallest upper limits obtained are $\sim 1.5\times {10}^{-25}$. These upper limits refer to all sky locations and the entire range of frequency derivative values. For a population-averaged ensemble of sky locations and stellar orientations, the lowest upper limits obtained for the strain amplitude are $\sim 2.5\times {10}^{-25}$.

We report on a search for gravitational waves from coalescing compact binaries using LIGO and Virgo observations between July 7, 2009, and October 20, 2010. We searched for signals from binaries with total mass between 2 and $25M_{\odot }$; this includes binary neutron stars, binary black holes, and binaries consisting of a black hole and neutron star. The detectors were sensitive to systems up to 40 Mpc distant for binary neutron stars, and further for higher mass systems. No gravitational-wave signals were detected. We report upper limits on the rate of compact binary coalescence as a function of total mass, including the results from previous LIGO and Virgo observations. The cumulative 90% confidence rate upper limits of the binary coalescence of binary neutron star, neutron star-black hole, and binary black hole systems are $1.3\times {10}^{-4}$, $3.1\times {10}^{-5}$, and $6.4\times {10}^{-6}{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-3}{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$, respectively. These upper limits are up to a factor 1.4 lower than previously derived limits. We also report on results from a blind injection challenge.

We report on the population properties of compact binary mergers inferred from gravitational-wave observations of these systems during the first three LIGO-Virgo observing runs. The Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog 3 (GWTC-3) contains signals consistent with three classes of binary mergers: binary black hole, binary neutron star, and neutron star–black hole mergers. We infer the binary neutron star merger rate to be between 10 and $1700{\mathrm{Gpc}}^{-3}{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$ and the neutron star–black hole merger rate to be between 7.8 and $140{\mathrm{Gpc}}^{-3}{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$, assuming a constant rate density in the comoving frame and taking the union of 90% credible intervals for methods used in this work. We infer the binary black hole merger rate, allowing for evolution with redshift, to be between 17.9 and $44{\mathrm{Gpc}}^{-3}{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$ at a fiducial redshift ($z=0.2$). The rate of binary black hole mergers is observed to increase with redshift at a rate proportional to $(1+z{)}^{\kappa }$ with $\kappa =2.9_{-1.8}^{+1.7}$ for $z\lesssim 1$. Using both binary neutron star and neutron star–black hole binaries, we obtain a broad, relatively flat neutron star mass distribution extending from ${1.2}_{-0.2}^{+0.1}$ to ${2.0}_{-0.3}^{+0.3}{M}_{\odot }$. We confidently determine that the merger rate as a function of mass sharply declines after the expected maximum neutron star mass, but cannot yet confirm or rule out the existence of a lower mass gap between neutron stars and black holes. We also find the binary black hole mass distribution has localized over- and underdensities relative to a power-law distribution, with peaks emerging at chirp masses of ${8.3}_{-0.5}^{+0.3}$ and ${27.9}_{-1.8}^{+1.9}{M}_{\odot }$. While we continue to find that the mass distribution of a binary’s more massive component strongly decreases as a function of primary mass, we observe no evidence of a strongly suppressed merger rate above approximately $60M_{\odot }$, which would indicate the presence of a upper mass gap. Observed black hole spins are small, with half of spin magnitudes below ${\chi }_i\approx 0.25$. While the majority of spins are preferentially aligned with the orbital angular momentum, we infer evidence of antialigned spins among the binary population. We observe an increase in spin magnitude for systems with more unequal-mass ratio. We also observe evidence of misalignment of spins relative to the orbital angular momentum.

The ever-increasing number of detections of gravitational waves from compact binaries by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors allows us to perform ever-more sensitive tests of general relativity (GR) in the dynamical and strong-field regime of gravity. We perform a suite of tests of GR using the compact binary signals observed during the second half of the third observing run of those detectors. We restrict our analysis to the 15 confident signals that have false alarm rates $\le {10}^{-3}{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$. In addition to signals consistent with binary black hole mergers, the new events include GW200115_042309, a signal consistent with a neutron star–black hole merger. We find the residual power, after subtracting the best fit waveform from the data for each event, to be consistent with the detector noise. Additionally, we find all the post-Newtonian deformation coefficients to be consistent with the predictions from GR, with an improvement by a factor of $\sim 2$ in the $-1\mathrm{PN}$ parameter. We also find that the spin-induced quadrupole moments of the binary black hole constituents are consistent with those of Kerr black holes in GR. We find no evidence for dispersion of gravitational waves, non-GR modes of polarization, or post-merger echoes in the events that were analyzed. We update the bound on the mass of the graviton, at 90% credibility, to $m_g\le 2.42\times {10}^{-23}\mathrm{eV}/c^2$. The final mass and final spin as inferred from the premerger and postmerger parts of the waveform are consistent with each other. The studies of the properties of the remnant black holes, including deviations of the quasinormal mode frequencies and damping times, show consistency with the predictions of GR. In addition to considering signals individually, we also combine results from the catalog of gravitational waves signals to calculate more precise population constraints. We find no evidence in support of physics beyond general relativity.

We present a search for gravitational waves from inspiraling, planetary-mass ultracompact binaries using data from the first part of the fourth observing run of LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA. Finding no evidence of such systems, we determine the maximum distance reach for such objects and their merger rate densities. Then, we identify classes of primordial black hole mass distributions for which these rate limits can be translated into relevant constraints on the mass distribution of primordial black holes, assuming that they are all composed of dark matter, in the mass range $[{10}^{-6},{10}^{-3}]M_{\odot }$. Our constraints for the class of primordial black hole mass distribution functions $f(m)$ we consider reach down to $f(m)\sim 0.1$. They are consistent with existing microlensing results in the planetary-mass range, provide a complementary probe to subsolar mass objects, and are publicly available [1].

We report results of a wideband search for periodic gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars within the Orion spur towards both the inner and outer regions of our Galaxy. As gravitational waves interact very weakly with matter, the search is unimpeded by dust and concentrations of stars. One search disk (A) is 6.87° in diameter and centered on $20^{\mathrm{h}}10^{\mathrm{m}}54.71^{\mathrm{s}}+33°33^{\prime }25.29^{\prime \prime }$, and the other (B) is 7.45° in diameter and centered on $8^{\mathrm{h}}35^{\mathrm{m}}20.61^{\mathrm{s}}-46°49^{\prime }25.151^{\prime \prime }$. We explored the frequency range of 50–1500 Hz and frequency derivative from 0 to $-5\times {10}^{-9}\mathrm{Hz}/\mathrm{s}$. A multistage, loosely coherent search program allowed probing more deeply than before in these two regions, while increasing coherence length with every stage. Rigorous follow-up parameters have winnowed the initial coincidence set to only 70 candidates, to be examined manually. None of those 70 candidates proved to be consistent with an isolated gravitational-wave emitter, and 95% confidence level upper limits were placed on continuous-wave strain amplitudes. Near 169 Hz we achieve our lowest 95% C.L. upper limit on the worst-case linearly polarized strain amplitude $h_0$ of $6.3\times {10}^{-25}$, while at the high end of our frequency range we achieve a worst-case upper limit of $3.4\times {10}^{-24}$ for all polarizations and sky locations.

We present the results of a weakly modeled burst search for gravitational waves from mergers of nonspinning intermediate mass black holes in the total mass range $100–450{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ and with the component mass ratios between $1:1$ and $4:1$. The search was conducted on data collected by the LIGO and Virgo detectors between November of 2005 and October of 2007. No plausible signals were observed by the search which constrains the astrophysical rates of the intermediate mass black holes mergers as a function of the component masses. In the most efficiently detected bin centered on $88+88{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$, for nonspinning sources, the rate density upper limit is 0.13 per ${\mathrm{Mpc}}^3$ per Myr at the 90% confidence level.