Abstract
We report on a search for gravitational waves from the coalescence of compact binaries during the third and fourth LIGO science runs. The search focused on gravitational waves generated during the inspiral phase of the binary evolution. In our analysis, we considered three categories of compact binary systems, ordered by mass: (i) primordial black hole binaries with masses in the range , , (ii) binary neutron stars with masses in the range , , and (iii) binary black holes with masses in the range , with the additional constraint , where was set to and in the third and fourth science runs, respectively. Although the detectors could probe to distances as far as tens of Mpc, no gravitational-wave signals were identified in the 1364 hours of data we analyzed. Assuming a binary population with a Gaussian distribution around , , and , we derived 90%-confidence upper limit rates of for primordial black hole binaries, for binary neutron stars, and for stellar mass binary black holes, where is times the blue-light luminosity of the Sun.
- Received 26 April 2007
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.77.062002
©2008 American Physical Society