Deep exploration for continuous gravitational waves at 171--172 Hz in LIGO second observing run data

Understand

We pursue a novel strategy towards a first detection of continuous gravitational waves from rapidly-rotating deformed neutron stars.

• Computational power is focused on a narrow region of signal parameter space selected by a strategically-chosen benchmark.
• We search data from the 2nd observing run of the LIGO Observatory with an optimised analysis run on graphics processing units.
• While no continuous waves are detected, the search achieves a sensitivity to gravitational wave strain of $h_0 = 1.01{\times}10^{-25}$ at 90% confidence, 24% to 69% better than past searches of the same parameter space.