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Upper limits on the isotropic gravitational-wave background from Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo's third observing run

  • LIGO Scientific Collaboration

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Abstract

We report results of a search for an isotropic gravitational-wave background (GWB) using data from Advanced LIGO's and Advanced Virgo's third observing run (O3) combined with upper limits from the earlier O1 and O2 runs. Unlike in previous observing runs in the advanced detector era, we include Virgo in the search for the GWB. The results of the search are consistent with uncorrelated noise, and therefore we place upper limits on the strength of the GWB. We find that the dimensionless energy density ωGW≤5.8×10-9 at the 95% credible level for a flat (frequency-independent) GWB, using a prior which is uniform in the log of the strength of the GWB, with 99% of the sensitivity coming from the band 20-76.6 Hz; ωGW(f)≤3.4×10-9 at 25 Hz for a power-law GWB with a spectral index of 2/3 (consistent with expectations for compact binary coalescences), in the band 20-90.6 Hz; and ωGW(f)≤3.9×10-10 at 25 Hz for a spectral index of 3, in the band 20-291.6 Hz. These upper limits improve over our previous results by a factor of 6.0 for a flat GWB, 8.8 for a spectral index of 2/3, and 13.1 for a spectral index of 3. We also search for a GWB arising from scalar and vector modes, which are predicted by alternative theories of gravity; we do not find evidence of these, and place upper limits on the strength of GWBs with these polarizations. We demonstrate that there is no evidence of correlated noise of magnetic origin by performing a Bayesian analysis that allows for the presence of both a GWB and an effective magnetic background arising from geophysical Schumann resonances. We compare our upper limits to a fiducial model for the GWB from the merger of compact binaries, updating the model to use the most recent data-driven population inference from the systems detected during O3a. Finally, we combine our results with observations of individual mergers and show that, at design sensitivity, this joint approach may yield stronger constraints on the merger rate of binary black holes at z2 than can be achieved with individually resolved mergers alone.

Original languageEnglish
Article number022004
Pages (from-to)1-27
Number of pages27
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume104
Issue number2
Early online date15 Jul 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Physical Society. All rights reserved.

Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by NSF’’s LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium. The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology, India, the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India, the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación, the Vicepresidència i Conselleria d’Innovació, Recerca i Turisme and the Conselleria d’Educació i Universitat del Govern de les Illes Balears, the Conselleria d’Innovació, Universitats, Ciència i Societat Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana and the CERCA Programme Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain, the National Science Centre of Poland and the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the Russian Science Foundation, the European Commission, the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), the Royal Society, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), the French Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO), the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS), Actions de Recherche Concertées (ARC) and Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek –Vlaanderen (FWO), Belgium, the Paris Île-de-France Region, the National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (NKFIH), the National Research Foundation of Korea, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada, Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovations, the International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR), the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Leverhulme Trust, the Research Corporation, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan, the United States Department of Energy, and the Kavli Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, STFC, INFN and CNRS for provision of computational resources. This work was supported by MEXT, JSPS Leading-edge Research Infrastructure Program, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research 26000005 (Kajita 2014-2018), JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas 2905: JP17H06358, JP17H06361 and JP17H06364, JSPS Core-to-Core Program A. Advanced Research Networks, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) 17H06133 and 20H05639, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas (A) 20A203: JP20H05854, the joint research program of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo, National Research Foundation (NRF) and Computing Infrastructure Project of KISTI-GSDC in Korea, Academia Sinica (AS), AS Grid Center (ASGC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) in Taiwan under grants including AS-CDA-105-M06, Advanced Technology Center (ATC) of NAOJ, Mechanical Engineering Center of KEK. All plots have been prepared using Matplotlib . We would like to thank all of the essential workers who put their health at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic, without whom we would not have been able to complete this work. This document has been assigned the number LIGO-DCC-P2000314.

FundersFunder number
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India
Ministry of Education, India
Australian Research Council
ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research
Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek –Vlaanderen
National Research Foundation of Korea
Narodowe Centrum Nauki
Scottish Universities Physics Alliance
National Science Foundation
Conselleria d’Innovació, Universitats, Ciència i Societat Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana
Medical Research Council
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Scottish Funding Council
Actions de Recherche Concertées
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
French Lyon Institute of Origins
Leverhulme Trust
Science and Engineering Research Board
Generalitat de Catalunya
Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Canada Foundation for Innovation
Kavli Foundation
Nemzeti Kutatási Fejlesztési és Innovációs Hivatal
KISTI-GSDC
European Commission
Russian Foundation for Basic Research
U.S. Department of Energy
Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovations
Agencia Estatal de Investigación
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee
Russian Science Foundation
Advanced Technology Center
Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej
Hungarian Scientific Research Fund
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique - FNRS
Royal Society
Universitat de les Illes Balears
European Regional Development Fund
University of Tokyo
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Fundação para a Ciência e a TecnologiaIncentivo/SAU/LA0001/2013
Science and Technology Facilities CouncilST/V005693/1, ST/R00045X/1, ST/V00123X/1, ST/T000147/1, ST/V000551/1, ST/V001019/1, ST/V005642/1, ST/T000759/1, ST/K000845/1, ST/V005634/1, ST/S000305/1, ST/V001736/1, ST/V005618/1, ST/V00154X/1, ST/S00243X/1, ST/V001337/1, ST/I006269/1, ST/S002464/1, ST/N000633/1, ST/N000072/1
Japan Society for the Promotion of ScienceJP20H05854, 17H06133, JP17H06361, 20A203, 26000005, JP17H06364, 18H01224, JP17H06358, 20H05639, 20K20286
Academia SinicaAS-CDA-105-M06
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research CouncilEP/V008617/1, EP/V048872/1

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    This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

    1. SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy
      SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy

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