Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with Fast Radio Bursts Detected by CHIME/FRB During the LIGO--Virgo Observing Run O3a

TL;DR

This study searched for gravitational waves associated with 62 fast radio bursts detected by CHIME/FRB during LIGO-Virgo's O3a run, finding no significant signals but setting upper limits on gravitational wave emission for various models.

Contribution

First combined search for gravitational waves and FRBs during LIGO-Virgo O3a, providing constraints on progenitor models and energy emission.

Findings

No significant gravitational-wave associations found.

Set 90% confidence lower bounds on FRB distances.

Established upper limits on gravitational wave energy emission.

Abstract

We search for gravitational-wave transients associated with fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB), during the first part of the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (1 April 2019 15:00 UTC-1 Oct 2019 15:00 UTC). Triggers from 22 FRBs were analyzed with a search that targets compact binary coalescences with at least one neutron star component. A targeted search for generic gravitational-wave transients was conducted on 40 FRBs. We find no significant evidence for a gravitational-wave association in either search. Given the large uncertainties in the distances of the FRBs inferred from the dispersion measures in our sample, however, this does not conclusively exclude any progenitor models that include emission of a gravitational wave of the types searched for from any of these FRB events. We report $90\%$ confidence lower bounds on the distance to each FRB for a range of gravitational-wave progenitor models. By combining the inferred maximum distance information for each FRB with the sensitivity of the gravitational-wave searches, we set upper limits on the energy emitted through gravitational waves for a range of emission scenarios. We find values of order $10^{51}$-$10^{57}$ erg for a range of different emission models with central gravitational wave frequencies in the range 70-3560 Hz. Finally, we also found no significant coincident detection of gravitational waves with the repeater, FRB 20200120E, which is the closest known extragalactic FRB.