Sensitivity improvements in the search for periodic gravitational waves using O1 LIGO data

Abstract

We demonstrate a breakthrough in the capabilities of robust, broad-parameter space searches for continuous gravitational waves. With a large scale search for continuous gravitational waves on the O1 LIGO data, we prove that our Falcon search achieves the sensitivity improvements expected from the use of a long coherence length, while maintaining the computational expense within manageable bounds. On this data we set the most constraining upper limits in the gravitational wave amplitude in the band 100-200 Hz. We provide full outlier lists and upper limits near 0-spindown band suitable for analysis of signals with small spindown such as boson condensates around black holes.