Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with Gamma-Ray Bursts Detected by Fermi and Swift During the LIGO-Virgo Run O3b

Understand

We search for gravitational-wave signals associated with gamma-ray bursts detected by the Fermi and Swift satellites during the second half of the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (1 November 2019 15:00 UTC-27 March 2020 17:00 UTC).We conduct two independent searches: a generic gravitational-wave transients search to analyze 86 gamma-ray bursts and an analysis to target binary mergers with at least one neutron star as short gamma-ray burst progenitors for 17 events.

• We find no significant evidence for gravitational-wave signals associated with any of these gamma-ray bursts.
• A weighted binomial test of the combined results finds no evidence for sub-threshold gravitational wave signals associated with this GRB ensemble either.
• We use several source types and signal morphologies during the searches, resulting in lower bounds on the estimated distance to each gamma-ray burst.