All-sky search for continuous gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars using Advanced LIGO O2 data

We present results of an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves (CWs), which can be produced by fast-spinning neutron stars with an asymmetry around their rotation axis, using data from the second observing run of the Advanced LIGO detectors. We employ three different semi-coherent methods (FrequencyHough, SkyHough, and Time-Domain F-statistic) to search in a gravitational-wave frequency band from 20 to 1922 Hz and a first frequency derivative from −1×10−8 to 2×10−9 Hz/s. None of these searches has found clear evidence for a CW signal, so we present upper limits on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude h0 (the lowest upper limit on h0 is 1.7×10−25 in the 123-124 Hz region) and discuss the astrophysical implications of this result. This is the most sensitive search ever performed over the broad range of parameters explored in this study.