Gravitational Wave Background Sky Maps from Advanced LIGO O1 Data

Understand

We integrate the publicly available O1 LIGO time-domain data to obtain maximum-likelihood constraints on the Gravitational Wave Background (GWB) arising from stochastic, persistent signals.

• Our method produces sky-maps of the strain intensity $I$ as a function of direction on the sky at a reference frequency $f_0$.
• The data is integrated assuming a set of fixed power-law spectra for the signal.
• The maps provide upper limits on the amplitude of the GWB density $\Omega_{\rm GW}(f_0)$ and any anisotropy around the background.