Searching for Asymmetric and Heavily Precessing Binary Black Holes in the Gravitational Wave Data from the LIGO Third Observing Run.

Leveraging the features of the GstLAL pipeline, we present the results of a matched filtering search for asymmetric binary black hole systems with heavily misaligned spins in LIGO and Virgo data taken during the third observing run. Our target systems show strong imprints of precession whereas current searches have nonoptimal sensitivity in detecting them. After measuring the sensitivity improvement brought by our search over standard spin-aligned searches, we report the detection of 30 gravitational wave events already discovered in the latest version of the Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog.

Gravitational-wave stochastic background from cosmic strings.

We consider the stochastic background of gravitational waves produced by a network of cosmic strings and assess their accessibility to current and planned gravitational wave detectors, as well as to big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), cosmic microwave background (CMB), and pulsar timing constraints. We find that current data from interferometric gravitational wave detectors, such as Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), are sensitive to areas of parameter space of cosmic string models complementary to those accessible to pulsar, BBN, and CMB bounds. Future more sensitive LIGO runs and interferometers such as Advanced LIGO and Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be able to explore substantial parts of the parameter space.