0000000000586081
AUTHOR
B Mours
Search for Multimessenger Sources of Gravitational Waves and High-energy Neutrinos with Advanced LIGO during Its First Observing Run, ANTARES, and IceCube
[EN] Astrophysical sources of gravitational waves, such as binary neutron star and black hole mergers or core-collapse supernovae, can drive relativistic outflows, giving rise to non-thermal high-energy emission. High-energy neutrinos are signatures of such outflows. The detection of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos from common sources could help establish the connection between the dynamics of the progenitor and the properties of the out¿ow. We searched for associated emission of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos from astrophysical transients with minimal assumptions using data from Advanced LIGO from its first observing run O1, and data from the ANTARES and IceCub…
Search for High-energy Neutrinos from Gravitational Wave Event GW151226 and Candidate LVT151012 with ANTARES and IceCube
[EN] The Advanced LIGO observatories detected gravitational waves from two binary black hole mergers during their first observation run (O1). We present a high-energy neutrino follow-up search for the second gravitational wave event, GW151226, as well as for gravitational wave candidate LVT151012. We find two and four neutrino candidates detected by IceCube, and one and zero detected by ANTARES, within +/- 500 s around the respective gravitational wave signals, consistent with the expected background rate. None of these neutrino candidates are found to be directionally coincident with GW151226 or LVT151012. We use nondetection to constrain isotropic-equivalent high-energy neutrino emission …
Properties of the Binary Neutron Star Merger GW170817
On August 17, 2017, the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors observed a low-mass compact binary inspiral. The initial sky localization of the source of the gravitational-wave signal, GW170817, allowed electromagnetic observatories to identify NGC 4993 as the host galaxy. In this work, we improve initial estimates of the binary's properties, including component masses, spins, and tidal parameters, using the known source location, improved modeling, and recalibrated Virgo data. We extend the range of gravitational-wave frequencies considered down to 23 Hz, compared to 30 Hz in the initial analysis. We also compare results inferred using several signal models, which ar…
UPDATE OF ELECTROWEAK PARAMETERS FROM Z DECAYS
Based on 520000 fermion pairs accumulated during the first three years of data collection by the ALEPH detector at LEP, updated values of the resonance parameters of the Z are determined to be M(Z) = (91.187 +/- 0.009) GeV, GAMMA(Z) = (2.501 +/- 0.012) GeV, sigma(had)0 = (41.60 +/- 0.27) nb, and R(l) = 20.78 +/- 0.13. The corresponding number of light neutrino species is N(v) = 2.97 +/- 0.05. The forward-backward asymmetry in lepton-pair decays is used to determine the ratio of vector to axial-vector couplings of leptons: g(V)2(M(z)2)/g(A)2 (M(Z)2) = 0.0052 +/- 0.00 1 6. Combining this with ALEPH measurements of the b and c quark asymmetries and tau polarization gives sin2theta(W)eff = 0.23…
Search for a very light CP-odd neutral Higgs boson of the MSSM
Abstract The reactions e + e − → hZ ∗ and e + e − → hA have been used to search for the neutral Higgs bosons h and A of the MSSM in the case where the CP -odd A is lighter than 2 m μ , taking into account the large h → AA decay branching ratio. No signal was found in the data sample collected until the end of 1991 by the ALEPH experiment at LEP. For tan β ⩾, m A m μ is excluded at 95% CL for any m h .
Search for particles with unexpected mass and charge in Z decays
During 1989 and 1990 over 180 000 hadronic and leptonic events, corresponding to 8 pb-1 of luminosity, were collected by the ALEPH detector in a scan of the Z peak at the e+e- collider LEP. This letter reports the results of a search in these data for particles with unexpected mass and charge by measurement of the ionization energy loss of charged tracks in the ALEPH TPC central tracking detector. The mass limits for the pair production of fractionally charged particles and of heavy, long lived charged particles are extended to 43 GeV/c2 at 90% confidence level. If single production of a heavy particle is considered, the mass limit is extended to more than 70 GeV/c2. RI Perrier, Frederic/A-…
MEASUREMENT OF THE TAU-POLARIZATION AT THE Z-RESONANCE
Using 18.8 pb-1 of data collected in 1990 and 1991, ALEPH has measured the tau polarisation in the decay modes tau-->enunuBAR, tau-->mununuBAR, tau-->rhonu tau-->a1nu, using both the individual tau decay kinematics and the event acollinearity. The measurement of the tau polarisation as a function of the production polar angle yields the two parameters A(tau) and A(e), where A(l) = 2g(V)l g(A)l/[(g(V)l)2 + (g(A)l)2]. The results A(tau) = 0.143 +/- 0.023 and A(e) = 0. 120 +/- 0.026 are consistent with the hypothesis of electron-tau universality. Assuming universality yields a measurement of the effective weak mixing angle sin 2theta(W)eff = 0.2332 +/- 0.0022.
Search for eccentric binary black hole mergers with advanced LIGO and advanced Virgo during their first and second observing runs
When formed through dynamical interactions, stellar-mass binary black holes may retain eccentric orbits ($e>0.1$ at 10 Hz) detectable by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Eccentricity can therefore be used to differentiate dynamically-formed binaries from isolated binary black hole mergers. Current template-based gravitational-wave searches do not use waveform models associated to eccentric orbits, rendering the search less efficient to eccentric binary systems. Here we present results of a search for binary black hole mergers that inspiral in eccentric orbits using data from the first and second observing runs (O1 and O2) of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. The search uses min…
A Standard Siren Measurement of the Hubble Constant from GW170817 without the Electromagnetic Counterpart
We perform a statistical standard siren analysis of GW170817. Our analysis does not utilize knowledge of NGC 4993 as the unique host galaxy of the optical counterpart to GW170817. Instead, we consider each galaxy within the GW170817 localization region as a potential host; combining the redshift from each galaxy with the distance estimate from GW170817 provides an estimate of the Hubble constant, $H_0$. We then combine the $H_0$ values from all the galaxies to provide a final measurement of $H_0$. We explore the dependence of our results on the thresholds by which galaxies are included in our sample, as well as the impact of weighting the galaxies by stellar mass and star-formation rate. Co…
Updated measurement of the average b hadron lifetime
An improved measurement of the average lifetime of b hadrons has been performed with the ALEPH detector. From a sample of 260000 hadronic Z0 decays, recorded during the 1991 LEP run with the silicon vertex detector fully operational, a fit to the impact parameter distribution of lepton tracks coming from semileptonic decays yields an average b hadron lifetime of 1.49 +/- 0.03 +/- 0.06 ps.
Search for Subsolar Mass Ultracompact Binaries in Advanced LIGO's Second Observing Run
We present a search for subsolar mass ultracompact objects in data obtained during Advanced LIGO’s second observing run. In contrast to a previous search of Advanced LIGO data from the first observing run, this search includes the effects of component spin on the gravitational waveform. We identify no viable gravitational-wave candidates consistent with subsolar mass ultracompact binaries with at least one component between \ud0.2\ud \ud \udM\ud⊙\ud–\ud1.0\ud \ud \udM\ud⊙\ud. We use the null result to constrain the binary merger rate of (\ud0.2\ud \ud \udM\ud⊙\ud, \ud0.2\ud \ud \udM\ud⊙\ud) binaries to be less than \ud3.7\ud×\ud10\ud5\ud \ud \udGpc\ud−\ud3\ud \udyr\ud−\ud1\udand the binary …
Gravitational Waves and Gamma-Rays from a Binary Neutron Star Merger: GW170817 and GRB 170817A
On 2017 August 17, the gravitational-wave event GW170817 was observed by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors, and the gamma-ray burst (GRB) GRB 170817A was observed independently by the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, and the Anticoincidence Shield for the Spectrometer for the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory. The probability of the near-simultaneous temporal and spatial observation of GRB 170817A and GW170817 occurring by chance is $5.0\times 10^{-8}$. We therefore confirm binary neutron star mergers as a progenitor of short GRBs. The association of GW170817 and GRB 170817A provides new insight into fundamental physics and the origin of short gamma-ray bursts. We use the ob…
Increasing the Astrophysical Reach of the Advanced Virgo Detector via the Application of Squeezed Vacuum States of Light
Current interferometric gravitational-wave detectors are limited by quantum noise over a wide range of their measurement bandwidth. One method to overcome the quantum limit is the injection of squeezed vacuum states of light into the interferometer's dark port. Here, we report on the successful application of this quantum technology to improve the shot noise limited sensitivity of the Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detector. A sensitivity enhancement of up to 3.2±0.1 dB beyond the shot noise limit is achieved. This nonclassical improvement corresponds to a 5%-8% increase of the binary neutron star horizon. The squeezing injection was fully automated and over the first 5 months of the thi…
GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs
We present the results from three gravitational-wave searches for coalescing compact binaries with component masses above 1$\mathrm{M}_\odot$ during the first and second observing runs of the Advanced gravitational-wave detector network. During the first observing run (O1), from September $12^\mathrm{th}$, 2015 to January $19^\mathrm{th}$, 2016, gravitational waves from three binary black hole mergers were detected. The second observing run (O2), which ran from November $30^\mathrm{th}$, 2016 to August $25^\mathrm{th}$, 2017, saw the first detection of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star inspiral, in addition to the observation of gravitational waves from a total of seven binary …