Loosely coherent search in LIGO O1 data for continuous gravitational waves from Terzan 5 and the Galactic Center

Abstract

We report results of a search for continuous gravitational waves from a region covering the globular cluster Terzan 5 and the galactic center. Continuous gravitational waves are expected from fast-spinning, slightly non-axisymmetric isolated neutron stars as well as more exotic objects. The regions that we target are believed to be unusually abundant in neutron stars. We use a new loosely coherent search method that allows to reach unprecedented levels of sensitivity for this type of search. The search covers the frequency band 475-1500 Hz and frequency time derivatives in the range of [-3e-8, +1e-9] Hz/s, which is a parameter range not explored before with the depth reached by this search. As to be expected with only a few months of data from the same observing run, it is very difficult to make a confident detection of a continuous signal over such a large parameter space. A list of parameter space points that passed all the thresholds of this search is provided. We follow-up the most significant outlier on the newly released O2 data and cannot confirm it. We provide upper limits on the gravitational wave strength of signals as a function of signal frequency.