All-sky search for gravitational-wave bursts in the second joint LIGO-Virgo run

Abstract

Wepresentresultsfromasearchforgravitational-waveburstsinthedatacollectedbytheLIGOandVirgodetectorsbetweenJuly7,2009andOctober20,2010:dataareanalyzedwhenatleasttwoofthethreeLIGO-Virgodetectorsareincoincidentoperation,withatotalobservationtimeof207days.Theanalysissearchesfortransientsofdurationlessthanabout1soverthefrequencyband64000Hz,withoutotherassumptionsonthesignalwaveform,polarization,directionoroccurrencetime.Allidentifiedeventsareconsistentwiththeexpectedaccidentalbackground.Wesetfrequentistupper limitsontherateofgravitational-waveburstsbycombiningthissearchwiththepreviousLIGO-VirgosearchonthedatacollectedbetweenNovember2005andOctober2007.Theupperlimitontherateofstronggravitational-waveburstsattheEarthis1.3eventsperyearat90%confidence.WealsopresentupperlimitsonsourceratedensityperyearandMpc3forsamplepopulationsofstandardcandlesources.Asinthepreviousjointrun,typicalsensitivitiesofthesearchintermsofthe root-sum-squaredstrainamplitudeforthesewaveformslieintherange5x10(-22)Hz(-1/2)to1x10(-20)Hz(-1/2).Thecombinationofthetwojointrunsentailsthemostsensitiveall-skysearch forgenericgravitational-waveburstsandsynthesizestheresultsachievedbytheinitialgenerationof interferometricdetectors.