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

The Astrophysical Journal The American Astronomical Society, find out more. The Institute of Physics, find out more. A publishing partnership Searches for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars at Two Harmonics in 2015–2017 LIGO Data B. P. Abbott1, R. Abbott1, T. D. Abbott2, S. Abraham3, F. Acernese4,5, K. Ackley6, C. Adams7, R. X. Adhikari1, V. B. Adya8,9, C. Affeldt8,9Show full author list Published 2019 June 26 • © 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 879, Number 1 Citation B. P. Abbott et al 2019 ApJ 879 10 DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ab20cb DownloadArticle PDF DownloadArticle ePub This article is corrected by 2019 ApJ 882 73 This article is corrected by 2020 ApJ 899 170 Figures Tables References Article data Download PDFDownload ePub Article metrics 5568 Total downloads Permissions Get permission to re-use this article Share this article Article and author information Abstract We present a search for gravitational waves from 222 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 the l = 2, m = 1 mode, with a frequency at the pulsar 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 1038 kg m2 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.