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Advanced LIGO and other ground-based interferometric gravitational-wave detectors use high laser power to minimize shot noise and suspended optics to reduce seismic noise coupling. This can result in an opto-mechanical coupling which can become unstable and saturate the interferometer control systems. The severity of these parametric instabilities scales with circulating laser power and first hindered LIGO operations in 2014. Static thermal tuning and active electrostatic damping have previously been used to control parametric instabilities at lower powers but are insufficient as power is increased. Here we report the first demonstration of dynamic thermal compensation to avoid parametric instability in an Advanced LIGO detector. Annular ring heaters that compensate central heating are used to tune the optical mode away from multiple problematic mirror resonance frequencies. We develop a single-cavity approximation model to simulate the optical beat note frequency during the central heating and ring heating transient. An experiment of dynamic ring heater tuning at the LIGO Livingston detector was carried out at 170 kW circulating power and, in agreement with our model, the third order optical beat note is controlled to avoid instability of the 15 and 15.5 kHz mechanical modes. We project that dynamic thermal compensation with ring heater input conditioning can be used in parallel with acoustic mode dampers to control the optical mode transient and avoid parametric instability of these modes up to Advanced LIGO’s design circulating power of 750  kW. The experiment also demonstrates the use of three mode interaction monitoring as a sensor of the cavity geometry, used to maintain theg-factor product tog₁g₂= 0.829 ± 0.004.

 

We present Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (Fermi-GBM) and Swift Burst Alert Telescope (Swift-BAT) searches for gamma-ray/X-ray counterparts to gravitational-wave (GW) candidate events identified during the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Using Fermi-GBM onboard triggers and subthreshold gamma-ray burst (GRB) candidates found in the Fermi-GBM ground analyses, the Targeted Search and the Untargeted Search, we investigate whether there are any coincident GRBs associated with the GWs. We also search the Swift-BAT rate data around the GW times to determine whether a GRB counterpart is present. No counterparts are found. Using both the Fermi-GBM Targeted Search and the Swift-BAT search, we calculate flux upper limits and present joint upper limits on the gamma-ray luminosity of each GW. Given these limits, we constrain theoretical models for the emission of gamma rays from binary black hole mergers.

 

We search for gravitational-wave (GW) transients associated with fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project, during the first part of the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2019 April 1 15:00 UTC–2019 October 1 15:00 UTC). Triggers from 22 FRBs were analyzed with a search that targets both binary neutron star (BNS) and neutron star–black hole (NSBH) mergers. A targeted search for generic GW transients was conducted on 40 FRBs. We find no significant evidence for a GW association in either search. Given the large uncertainties in the distances of our FRB sample, we are unable to exclude the possibility of a GW association. Assessing the volumetric event rates of both FRB and binary mergers, an association is limited to 15% of the FRB population for BNS mergers or 1% for NSBH mergers. We report 90% confidence lower bounds on the distance to each FRB for a range of GW progenitor models and set upper limits on the energy emitted through GWs for a range of emission scenarios. We find values of order 10⁵¹–10⁵⁷erg for models with central GW frequencies in the range 70–3560 Hz. At the sensitivity of this search, we find these limits to be above the predicted GW emissions for the models considered. We also find no significant coincident detection of GWs with the repeater, FRB 20200120E, which is the closest known extragalactic FRB.

 

Abstract The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in 2019 April and lasting six months, O3b starting in 2019 November and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in 2020 April and lasting two weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at https://gwosc.org . The main data set, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages.