Searches for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars at Two Harmonics in 2015-2017 LIGO Data

Document #:

LIGO-P1800344-v8

Document type:

P - Publications

Abstract:

We present a search for gravitational waves from 221 pulsars with rotation frequencies > 10 Hz. We use advanced LIGO data from its first and second observing runs spanning 2015-2017, which provides the highest-sensitivity gravitational-wave data so far obtained. In this search we target emission from both the l=m=2 mass quadrupole mode, with a frequency at twice that of the pulsar's rotation, and from the l=2, m=1 mode, with a frequency at the pulsar's rotation frequency. The search finds no evidence for gravitational-wave emission from any pulsar at either frequency. For the l=m=2 mode search, we provide updated upper limits on the gravitational-wave amplitude, mass quadrupole moment, and fiducial ellipticity for 167 pulsars, and the first such limits for a further 55. For 20 young pulsars these results give limits that are below those inferred from the pulsars' spin-down. For the Crab and Vela pulsars our results constrain gravitational-wave emission to account for less than 0.017% and 0.18% of the spin-down luminosity, respectively. For the recycled millisecond pulsar J0711-6830 our limits are only a factor of 1.3 above the spin-down limit, assuming the canonical value of 10^38 kg m^2 for the star's moment of inertia, and imply a gravitational-wave-derived upper limit on the star’s ellipticity of 1.2×10-8. We also place new limits on the emission amplitude at the rotation frequency of the pulsars.

Files in Document:

• TargetedPulsarPaper.pdf (1.3 MB)

Other Files:

• Machine Readable ascii table of results (resultstable.txt, 114.2 kB)

Topics:

• Continuous Wave

Author Groups:

• LVC

Notes and Changes:

Matches published version.

Referenced by:

• LIGO-P2000272-v3: Erratum: "Searches for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars at Two Harmonics in 2015-2017 LIGO Data"

Journal References:

Published in ApJ vol. 879 pg. 10.