Sensitivity Improvements in the Search for Periodic Gravitational Waves Using O1 LIGO Data

We demonstrate a breakthrough in the capabilities of robust, broad-parameter space searches for continuous gravitational waves. With a large scale search for continuous gravitational waves on the O1 LIGO data, we prove that our Falcon search achieves the sensitivity improvements expected from the use of a long coherence length, while maintaining the computational expense within manageable bounds. On these data we set the most constraining upper limits in the gravitational wave amplitude in the band 100-200 Hz. We provide full outlier lists and upper limits near the 0-spin-down band suitable for analysis of signals with small spin-down such as boson condensates around black holes.