All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in the first Advanced LIGO observing run

Abstract

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in the data of the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston second generation detectors between $ \newcommand{\OOneStart}{{\rm 12 ~September ~2015}} \newcommand{\OOneStartShort}{{\rm September ~2015}} \OOneStartShort$ and $ \newcommand{\OOneStop}{{\rm 19~ January ~2016}} \newcommand{\OOneStopShort}{{\rm January~ 2016}} \OOneStopShort$ , with a total observational time of $ \newcommand{\OOneLivetime}{{\rm 49~d}} \OOneLivetime$ . The search targets gravitational wave transients of 10–500 s duration in a frequency band of 24–2048 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. No significant events were observed. 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. We also show that the search is sensitive to sources in the Galaxy emitting at least ~10−8 $ \newcommand{\msuncd}{{\rm M_{\odot} c^2}} \newcommand{\msun}{{\rm M_{\odot}}} {\msuncd}$ in gravitational waves.