All-sky radiometer for narrowband gravitational waves using folded data

We demonstrate an all-sky search for persistent, narrowband gravitational waves using mock data. The search employs radiometry to sidereal-folded data in order to uncover persistent sources of gravitational waves with minimal assumptions about the signal model. The method complements continuous-wave searches, which are finely tuned to search for gravitational waves from rotating neutron stars, while providing a means of detecting more exotic sources that might be missed by dedicated continuous-wave techniques. We apply the algorithm to simulated Gaussian noise. We project the strain amplitude sensitivity assuming circularly polarized signals for the LIGO network in the first observing run to be h 0 ≈ 1.2 × 10 − 24 (1% false alarm probability, 10% false dismissal probability). We include a treatment of instrumental lines and detector artifacts using time-shifted LIGO data from the first observing run.