2023 Departmental Poster Competition

Magnetars are highly magnetized neutron stars with a variety of electromagnetic emission, including x-ray flares and fast radio bursts (FRBs). Searches for gravitational waves coincident with magnetar x-ray bursts and FRBs during the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Virgo (O3) found no evidence of gravitational waves, but did place upper limits on gravitational-wave energy emission. Here we present modifications to an existing LIGO pipeline to allow for a 'stacked' search over multiple electromagnetic burst events. We present the methods of stacking, as well as approximate the improvement in sensitivity for different numbers of bursts in the stack. We discuss the limitations of stacking, as well as parameters of the analysis that are available for adjustment. Potential uses of this stacking pipeline include the x-ray bursts from SGR 1935+2154 during O3, the repeated FRBs from the same source in 2020, and any repeated magnetar bursts and FRBs that happen in O4.