- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

First loosely coherent search for continuous gravitational wave sources with substellar companions in the Orion spur

Vladimir Dergachev1,* and Maria Alessandra Papa1,2,†

  • *Contact author: vladimir.dergachev@aei.mpg.de
  • †Contact author: maria.alessandra.papa@aei.mpg.de
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 112, 062005 – Published 24 September, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/58k2-qhnp

Abstract

We report on the first loosely coherent search for continuous gravitational waves from neutron stars in binary systems. We searched ≈0.01  sr in the Orion spur, a high stellar density region close to Earth. We covered gravitational wave frequencies from 100 to 700 Hz and frequency derivatives in the range ±10−11  Hz/s. An atlas of results from the search is made publicly available. A follow-up was performed, on a subset of the released results, which found no outliers.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (24)

  1. F. Amicucci, P. Leaci, P. Astone, S. D’Antonio, S. Dal Pra, M. Di Giovanni, L. D’Onofrio, F. Muciaccia, C. Palomba, L. Pierini et al., A directed continuous-wave search from Scorpius X-1 with the five-vector resampling technique, arXiv:2503.07863.
  2. L. Mirasola, P. Leaci, P. Astone, L. D’Onofrio, S. Dall’Osso, A. De Falco, M. Lai, S. Mastrogiovanni, C. Palomba, A. Riggio et al., New semicoherent targeted search for continuous gravitational waves from pulsars in binary systems, Phys. Rev. D 110, 123043 (2024).
  3. P. B. Covas, M. A. Papa, and R. Prix, Search for continuous gravitational waves from unknown neutron stars in binary systems with long orbital periods in O3 data, Astrophys. J. 985, 192 (2025).
  4. P. B. Covas, M. A. Papa, R. Prix, and B. J. Owen, Constraints on r-modes and mountains on millisecond neutron stars in binary systems, Astrophys. J. Lett. 929, L19 (2022).
  5. K. Riles, Searches for continuous-wave gravitational radiation, Living Rev. Relativity 26, 3 (2023).
  6. E. Goetz and K. Riles, An all-sky search algorithm for continuous gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars in binary systems, Classical Quantum Gravity 28, 215006 (2011).
  7. P. B. Covas and A. M. Sintes, First all-sky search for continuous gravitational-wave signals from unknown neutron stars in binary systems using Advanced LIGO data, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 191102 (2020).
  8. P. B. Covas and R. Prix, Improved all-sky search method for continuous gravitational waves from unknown neutron stars in binary systems, Phys. Rev. D 106, 084035 (2022).
  9. V. Dergachev, On blind searches for noise dominated signals: A loosely coherent approach, Classical Quantum Gravity 27, 205017 (2010).
  10. V. Dergachev, Loosely coherent searches for sets of well-modeled signals, Phys. Rev. D 85, 062003 (2012).
  11. V. Dergachev, Loosely coherent searches for medium scale coherence lengths, arXiv:1807.02351.
  12. Vladimir Dergachev and Maria Alessandra Papa, Frequency-resolved atlas of the sky in continuous gravitational waves, Phys. Rev. X 13, 021020 (2023).
  13. Vladimir Dergachev and Maria Alessandra Papa, Early release of the expanded atlas of the sky in continuous gravitational waves, Phys. Rev. D 109, 022007 (2024).
  14. Vladimir Dergachev and Maria Alessandra Papa, Expanded ATLAS of the sky in continuous gravitational waves, Phys. Rev. D 112, 042005 (2025).
  15. The O3a Data Release, 10.7935/nfnt-hm34.
  16. The O3b Data Release, 10.7935/pr1e-j706.
  17. J. Aasi et al. (LIGO Scientific and VIRGO Collaborations), Search of the Orion spur for continuous gravitational waves using a loosely coherent algorithm on data from LIGO interferometers, Phys. Rev. D 93, 042006 (2016).
  18. R. N. Manchester, G. B. Hobbs, A. Teoh, and M. Hobbs, The Australia telescope national facility pulsar catalogue, Astron. J. 129, 1993 (2005).
  19. R. Blandford and S. A. Teukolsky, Arrival-time analysis for a pulsar in a binary system, Astrophys. J. 205, 580 (1976).
  20. Vladimir Dergachev, Efficient representations of upper limits and confidence intervals for experimental data, Phys. Rev. D 110, 085001 (2024).
  21. V. Dergachev, A novel universal statistic for computing upper limits in ill-behaved background, Phys. Rev. D 87, 062001 (2013).
  22. For numerical values of upper limits and the full atlas, see V. Dergachev and M. A. Papa, 2025, https://www.aei.mpg.de/continuouswaves/O3aFalconBinary100-700.
  23. R. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific, Virgo, and VIRGO Collaborations), All-sky search in early O3 LIGO data for continuous gravitational-wave signals from unknown neutron stars in binary systems, Phys. Rev. D 103, 064017 (2021); 108, 069901(E) (2023).
  24. https://www.gw-openscience.org

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 112, 062005– Published 24 September, 2025
  • Received 5 April 2025
  • Accepted 5 September 2025
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation