Narrowband searches for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in the first two parts of the fourth LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA observing run

Abstract

Rotating non-axisymmetric neutron stars (NSs) are promising sources for continuous gravitational waves (CWs). Such CWs can, if detected, inform us about the internal structure and equation of state of NSs. Here, we present a narrowband search for CWs from known pulsars, for which an efficient and sensitive matched-filter search can be applied. Narrowband searches are designed to be robust to mismatches between the electromagnetic (EM) and gravitational emissions, in contrast to fully targeted searches where the CW emission is assumed to be phase-locked to the EM one. In this work, we search for the CW counterparts emitted by 34 pulsars using data from the first and second parts of the fourth LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA observing run. This is the largest number of pulsars so far targeted for narrowband searches in the advanced detector era. We use the 5n-vector narrowband pipeline, which applies frequency-domain matched filtering. In previous searches, it covered a narrow range in the frequency -- frequency time derivative ($f$ -- $\dot{f}$) space. Here, we also explore a range in the second time derivative of the frequency $\ddot{f}$ around the value indicated by EM observations. Additionally, for the first time, we target sources in a binary system with this kind of search. We find no evidence for CWs and therefore set upper limits on the strain amplitude emitted by each pulsar, using simulated signals added in real data. For 20 analyses, we report an upper limit below the theoretical spin-down limit. The tightest constraint is for pulsar PSR J0534+2200 (the Crab pulsar), for which our strain upper limit on the CW amplitude is $\lesssim 2\%$ of its spin-down limit, corresponding to less than $0.04\%$ of the spin-down power being radiated in the CW channel.

30 pages, 6 figures, submitted to ApJ

References in corpus (92)

• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• The Large Area Telescope on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Mission
• Advanced LIGO
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• A New Electron Density Model for Estimation of Pulsar and FRB Distances
• An increased estimate of the merger rate of double neutron stars from observations of a highly relativistic system
• Tests of General Relativity with the Binary Black Hole Signals from the LIGO-Virgo Catalog GWTC-1
• An Overview of the Performance and Scientific Results from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO)
• A new class of unstable modes of rotating relativistic stars
• Data analysis of gravitational-wave signals from spinning neutron stars. I. The signal and its detection
• Tempo2, a new pulsar timing package. II: The timing model and precision estimates
• A study of 315 glitches in the rotation of 102 pulsars
• Axial instability of rotating relativistic stars
• Fourier Techniques for Very Long Astrophysical Time Series Analysis
• Deformations of Accreting Neutron Star Crusts and Gravitational Wave Emission
• Gravitational Waves from Neutron Stars with Large Toroidal B-fields
• Detection of 16 Gamma-Ray Pulsars Through Blind Frequency Searches Using the Fermi LAT
• Maximum elastic deformations of compact stars with exotic equations of state
• Discovery of an Ultra-fast X-ray Pulsar in the Supernova Remnant N157B
• On Pulsar Distance Measurements and their Uncertainties
• Beating the spin-down limit on gravitational wave emission from the Crab pulsar
• Maximum elastic deformations of relativistic stars
• Detection of 107 glitches in 36 southern pulsars
• Observation of Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a $2.5\text{-}4.5M_{\odot }$ Compact Object and a Neutron Star
• PINT: A Modern Software Package for Pulsar Timing
• The Hough transform search for continuous gravitational waves
• The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey: V. Finding binary and millisecond pulsars
• High time resolution observations of the January 2000 glitch in the Vela pulsar
• A Comprehensive Study of Relativistic Gravity using PSR B1534+12
• PSR J2229+6114: Discovery of an Energetic Young Pulsar in the Error Box of the EGRET Source 3EG J2227+6122
• Discovery of X-ray Pulsations from the Compact Central Source in the Supernova Remnant 3C 58
• Searches for Continuous-Wave Gravitational Radiation
• Searching for gravitational waves from Cassiopeia A with LIGO
• Improving the Sensitivity of Advanced LIGO Using Noise Subtraction
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. III: Gravitational wave simulation
• The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: First Data Release
• Advanced LIGO detector performance in the fourth observing run
• Squeezing the quantum noise of a gravitational-wave detector below the standard quantum limit
• Gravitational-wave constraints on the equatorial ellipticity of millisecond pulsars
• Probing Dynamical Gravity with the Polarization of Continuous Gravitational Waves
• Postprocessing methods used in the search for continuous gravitational-wave signals from the Galactic Center
• Narrow-band search for gravitational waves from known pulsars using the second LIGO observing run
• The CHIME Pulsar Project: System Overview
• Gravitational wave emission from rotating superfluid neutron stars
• New Pulsars from an Arecibo Drift Scan Search
• SWIGLAL: Python and Octave interfaces to the LALSuite gravitational-wave data analysis libraries
• PSR J2021+3651: A Young Radio Pulsar Coincident with an Unidentified EGRET Gamma-ray Source
• Fast and Accurate Sensitivity Estimation for Continuous-Gravitational-Wave Searches
• The Large Magellanic Cloud and the Distance Scale
• Narrowband searches for continuous and long-duration transient gravitational waves from known pulsars in the LIGO-Virgo third observing run
• Searches for continuous gravitational waves from neutron stars: A twenty-year retrospective
• High-energy characteristics of the schizophrenic pulsar PSR J1846-0258 in Kes 75
• R-mode frequencies of slowly rotating relativistic neutron stars with realistic equations of state
• GWTC-4.0: Updating the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog with Observations from the First Part of the Fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Observing Run
• First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data
• LIGO Detector Characterization in the first half of the fourth Observing run
• psrqpy: a python interface for querying the ATNF pulsar catalogue
• The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT III: Giant pulse characteristics of PSR J0540$-$6919
• Statistical characterization of pulsar glitches and their potential impact on searches for continuous gravitational waves
• Narrow-band search of continuous gravitational-wave signals from Crab and Vela pulsars in Virgo VSR4 data
• Discovery of an Energetic Pulsar Associated with SNR G76.9+1.0
• Modelling neutron star mountains in relativity
• The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: The $4.5$-year data release and the noise and stochastic signals of the millisecond pulsar population
• Discovery of a Young, Energetic 70.5 ms Pulsar Associated with the TeV Gamma-ray Source HESS J1837-069
• A method for narrow-band searches of continuous gravitational wave signals
• Prospects of observing continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars
• Neutron Star Crust Can Support A Large Ellipticity
• The Pulsar Search Collaboratory: Discovery and Timing of Five New Pulsars
• Gravitational waves from color-magnetic `mountains' in neutron stars
• Long-term spectral and timing properties of the soft gamma-ray repeater SGR 1833-0832 and detection of extended X-ray emission around the radio pulsar PSR B1830-08
• Proper Motions of PSRs B1757-24 and B1951+32: Implications for Ages and Associations
• New searches for continuous gravitational waves from seven fast pulsars
• Upgraded antennas for pulsar observations in the Argentine Institute of Radio astronomy
• An improved algorithm for narrow-band searches of continuous gravitational waves
• Search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in the first part of the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run
• Improving pulsar polarization and timing measurements with the Nançay Radio Telescope
• Gravitational waves from neutron-star mountains
• Relativistic correction to the r-mode frequency in light of multi-messenger constraints
• Consecutive Bright Pulses in the Vela Pulsar
• Search for continuous gravitational wave signals from luminous dark photon superradiance clouds with LVK O3 observations
• Universal relations to measure neutron star properties from targeted r-mode searches
• IKT16: Discovery of a 22 ms energetic rotation-powered pulsar in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Toward Low-Latency, High-Fidelity Calibration of the LIGO Detectors with Enhanced Monitoring Tools
• Two sides of the same coin: the F-statistic and the 5-vector method
• A directed continuous-wave search from Scorpius X-1 with the five-vector resampling technique
• New semicoherent targeted search for continuous gravitational waves from pulsars in binary systems
• Analytic weak-signal approximation of the Bayes factor for continuous gravitational waves
• A growing braking index and spin-down swings for the pulsar PSR B0540-69
• Colloquium: Multimessenger astronomy with continuous gravitational waves and future detectors
• Study of the 2024 major Vela glitch at the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy
• Constraints on gravitational waves from the 2024 Vela pulsar glitch
• Gravitational pulsars: correlations between the electromagnetic and the continuous gravitational wave signal