Implementation of an F-statistic all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in Virgo VSR1 data

Document #:

LIGO-P1300133-v11

Document type:

P - Publications

Abstract:

We present an implementation of the F-statistic to carry out the first search in data from the Virgo laser interferometric gravitational wave detector for periodic gravitational waves from a priori unknown, isolated rotating neutron stars. We searched a frequency \( f_0 \) range from 100Hz to 1kHz and the frequency dependent spindown \( f_1 \) range from \( -1.6(f_0/100Hz) \times 10^{-9} \) Hz/s to zero. A large part of this frequency - spindown space was unexplored by any of the all-sky searches published so far. Our method consisted of a coherent search over two-day periods using the \( \F \)-statistic, followed by a search for coincidences among the candidates from the two-day segments. We have introduced a number of novel techniques and algorithms that allow the use of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm in the coherent part of the search resulting in a fifty-fold speed-up in computation of the F-statistic with respect to the algorithm used in the other pipelines. No significant gravitational wave signal was found. The sensitivity of the search was estimated by injecting signals into the data. In the most sensitive parts of the detector band more than 90% of signals would have been detected with dimensionless gravitational-wave amplitude greater than \( 5 \times 10^{-24} \).

Files in Document:

• FstatVSR1_AllSky_CQG_v1.pdf (C:\Documents and Settings\SONY\Moje dokumenty\Virgo\Al...pdf, file is not accessible)

Other Files:

• Reply to the referees (C:\Documents and Settings\SONY\Moje dokumenty\Virgo\Al...txt, file is not accessible)
• Tarball containing the data files to create Figs. 4 and 10 of the paper (Fig_4_10.tar, file is not accessible)

Topics:

• Continuous Wave

Authors:

• Michal Bejger
• Andrzej Krolak

Publication Information:

ArXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.4974
Science Summary: http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-VSR1CWAllSkyFstat/